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THE 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

FROM 


THE EARLIEST TIMES 


THE PEACE OE PARIS, 1S56-. 


CHARLES DUKE YONGE, 

AUTHOR OF AN ENGLISH-GREEK LEXICON, 

A LATIN DICTIONARY, &C. &C. 




r 



LONDON: 

RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. 

1857. 


[ The Right of Translation is reserved .] 




LONDON : 

GII.BF.RT AND R1VINGTON, PRINTERS, 

st. John’s square. 








« 



TO THE HONOURABLE 


MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE, 

AS A TOKEN OF CORDIAL RESPECT 

FOR HIS MANY EMINENT TALENTS AND VIRTUES, 

AND OF SINCERE GRATITUDE 

FOR HIS CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP, 

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 

BY HIS AFFECTIONATE KINSMAN, 


C. D. YONGE. 




























PREFACE. 


It may be thought a sufficient apology for offering to the 
world the following brief sketch of the history of England, 
that, since the most recent works on the same scale have 
been compiled, many very important volumes have been 
published, throwing so much light upon the most modern 
period of that history, that an author who now endeavours 
to give an account of the times to which those works relate 
has great advantages over earlier writers. I allude par¬ 
ticularly to the works of Guizot, Macaulay, Lord Mahon, 
and Alison, and also to the numerous and valuable pub¬ 
lications containing the letters, despatches, &c., of the 
Grenvilles, Lord Rockingham, Lord Malmesbury, Eox, Lord 
Castlereagh, Lord Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington; to 
the elaborate and eloquent histories of our Indian cam¬ 
paigns by different authors;-to Lord Campbell’s Lives of 
the Chancellors; and to many other volumes of letters, 
journals, and biographies, greatly facilitating our acquaint¬ 
ance with the periods to which they respectively relate, 
by presenting us with information in an easily accessible 
form, which previously could only be attained with exceed¬ 
ing difficulty, and then only in a scanty degree. 

a 2 






1Y 


PREFACE. 


For a book of such moderate pretensions and confined 
dimensions as the present, it will not be expected that the 
author has had recourse to unpublished documents; but he 
is not aware of having omitted to consult any important 
printed work, referring to his subject, in either English or 
French literature, though he has not thought it necessary 
to encumber his page or to distract the attention of the 
reader by references to authorities, which, from the period 
and the subjects treated of, may in general be easily con¬ 
jectured. 

The Index is arranged in such a manner, that it may 
serve as a Chronological Table of the general history of the 
kingdom up to the present time. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


OF 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

B.C. PAGE 

900. Early traditions . . 1 

Tlie Phoenicians worked 
.tin-mines ... 2 

54. Ca;sar invades Britain . ib. 

A.D. 

400. The Romans quit the is¬ 
land . . . . ib. 

440. The Piets and Scots over¬ 
run the island . . ib. 

449. The Saxons invade Britain 3 

457. The Saxon heptarchy esta¬ 
blished . . . ib. 

590. Ethelbert king of Kent . 5 

597. Augustine comes to Britain 

as a missionary . . ib. 

832. Egbert subdues Kent and 

Essex .... 6 

The Danes invade Britain . ib. 

8G0. In Ethelwolfs time the 
Danes establish them¬ 
selves in the Isle of 
Thanet . . . ib. 

Athelstan, Ethelbald, 
Ethelbert, Ethelred . 7 

871. Alfred succeeds to the 

throne ... 8 


CHAPTER II. 

879. His wars with the Danes . 10 

880. He defeats Guthrum . 12 

He introduces great re¬ 
forms . . . .13 

881. Hasting invades Britain . 14 


A.D. PAGE 

901. Alfred dies . . .15 


CHAPTER III. 

901. Edward the Elder . . 16 

924. Athelstan succeeds to the 

throne . . . ib. 

His high reputation abroad 17 
Hisencouragementof naval 
interests . . .18 

941. Edmund succeeds . . ib. 

946. Edred succeeds, and (in 

955) Edwy . . .18 

950—959. ArchbishopsOdoand 
Dunstan begin to have 
great influence . . ib. 

959. Edgar succeeds Edwy . 19 

975. Edward the Martyr . . 20 

978. He is murdered by Elfrida, 
and succeeded by Ethel- 
red . . . . 21 

980. The Danes, under Olave 
and Sweyn, invade Eng¬ 
land . . . .22 

1002. Ethelred massacres the 

Danes . . . .23 

1013. Edmund Ironside succeeds 24 
1016. Canute the Dane becomes 

king . . . . ib. 


CHAPTER IY. 

1025. The rise of earl Godwin . 25 








Y1 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. 1-ALrii 

1035. Harold Harefoot succeeds 

Canute . • .27 

1039. Hardicanute succeeds Ha¬ 
rold . . . . ib. 

1041. Edward the Confessor suc¬ 
ceeds Hardicanute . ib. 
1066. Edward dies, and is suc¬ 
ceeded by Harold . 30 

William, duke of Nor¬ 
mandy, defeats Harold 
at Hastings . . .33 

CHAPTER V. 

1066. Edgar Atheling is pro¬ 

claimed king in London 37 
He submits to William . ib. 
William is crowned at 
Westminster . . ib. 

1067. The English rebel against 

William ... 38 
He lays waste large tracts 
of country . . .39 

1075. He introduces the feudal 

system . 41 

His eldest son,Robert,rebels 
against him . . .42 

1087. William dies . . .43 


CHAPTER YI. 

1087. William II., called Rufus, 

succeeds to the throne . 44 
William invades Nor¬ 
mandy . . .45 

He compels Malcolm, king 
of Scotland, to do 
homage . . . ib. 

Robert mortgages Nor¬ 
mandy to William . 46 

William quarrels with the 
Church . . . ib. 

1100. He is killed in the New 

Forest . . .48 


CHAPTER VII. 

1100. Prince Henry, his younger 

brother, seizes the throne 48 
He marries Edgar Athe- 
ling’s sister . . . 49 

Robert sells to Henry his 
claims on England . 51 
Henry subdues Normandy 52 
Henry’s son is drowned . 53 


A.D. PAGE 

1100. Henry’s daughter Matilda 
is acknowledged as his 

heir . . . .54 

1133. Her son, afterwards Henry 

II., is born . . . ib. 

1135. Henry dies . . .55 


CHAPTER VIII. 

1135. Stephen seizes the kingdom 56 
Matilda’s partisans attack 

him . . . .57 

1136. The battle of the Standard ib. 
1141. Civil war in England . 58 

The pope lays England 
under an interdict . ib. 
Prince Henry distinguishes 
himself . . .59 

He invades England, and 
makes an agreement 
with Stephen . . ib. 

1153. Stephen dies . .' .60 


CHAPTER IX. 

1153. Henry II. succeeds to the 

throne . . .60 

He makes large acquisitions 
on the Continent . . 62 

1162. The rise of Becket . . 63 

He encroaches on the 
king's authority . . 65 

1170. He is reconciled to the 

king . . . .68 

Again quarrels with him, 
and is murdered . . 69 

1171. Henry invades and con¬ 

quers Ireland , . 71 

Henry’s sons rebel against 
him . . . .72 

1174. "YY illiam the Lion, king of 
Scotland, is defeated, 
and taken prisoner by 
Henry . . . ib. 

1189. Henry dies . . .74 


CHAPTER X. 

1189. Richard I., Cceur de Lion, 

succeeds to the throne . 75 

1190. He joins the third crusade 77 
1192. On his return to England 

he is imprisoned by the 
duke of Austria . . 81 

1194. He arrives in England . 82 



OF CONTENTS. 


Vll 


AD. PAGE 

1194. He invades France . . 82 

1199. He is killed . . .84 


CHAPTER XI. 

1199. John succeeds to the throne 85 
Pie invades Brittany . 86 

1212. He quarrels with the pope, 

who lays the kingdom 
under an interdict . 87 

1213. He wars with Scotland, 

Ireland, and Wales . 88 

The barons rebel against 
him . . . .89 

1215. John grants Magna Charta 91 

1216. The French prince Louis 

invades England . . 92 

John dies . . . ib. 


CHAPTER XII. 

1216. Henry III. succeeds; the 

earl of Pembroke being 
regent . . . .94 

1217. The first naval victory 

gained over the French 
by Philip d’Albiney . 95 
Pembroke dies, and is suc¬ 
ceeded by Hubert de 
Burgh . . . ib. 

1236. The king becomes very 

unpopular . . .96 

1254. The battle of Taillebourg. 97 
1260. Simon de Montfort excites 

the barons against Henry 99 

1264. The battle of Lewes. . 101 

1265. The first parliament meets ib. 

1266. The battle of Evesham . 103 
1270. Prince Edward goes to the 

crusade . . . ib. 

1274. Henry III. dies, and is 

succeeded by Edward I. 104 


CHAPTER XIII. 

1274. Edward’s severity to the 

Jews .... 107 
1278. He invades and subdues 

AVales . . .108 

1296. He invades Scotland .112 


CHAPTER XIY. 

1297. Wallace rouses the Scotch 114 


A D. PAGE 

1297. The barons resist Edward’s 

exactions . . ,115 

The battle of Stirling . 116 

1298. The battle of Falkirk . 117 

1305. Wallace is betrayed and 

executed . . .118 

The younger Bruce rises 
against Edward . .119 

1306. Bruce is crowned king of 

Scotland . . . 120 

1307. Edward dies . . . 122 


CHAPTER XY. 

1307. Edward II. succeeds to the 

throne . . .124 

1314. Battle of Bannockburn . 126 
1324. The queen joins the barons 

against her husband . 129 
1327. Edward is deposed and 

murdered . . .130 


CHAPTER XVI. 

1327. Edward III. becomes king 131 
In a war with the Scots his 
camp is surprised by 
Douglas . . .132 

1330. Mortimer is executed, and 

the queen imprisoned . ib. 
1333. The battle of Halidon Hill 134 
1337. Edward claims the French 

crown . . .135 

1339. The naval battle of Sluys . 138 

1340. Edward consents to some 

domestic reforms . .,140 


CHAPTER XVII. 

1342. He again invades France . 141 

1345. The battle of Auberoche . 142 

1346. The battle of Crecy. . 143 

The battle of Neville’s 

Cross .... 145 

1347. Calais is taken by Edward 147 

1349. The story of the chaplet of 

pearls .... 148 

1350. The king defeats the 

Spaniards at sea . .149 

1355. Fresh war with France . 150 

1356. The battle of Poitiers . 151 
1360. Edward makes peace with 

France.... 152 
1367. He diminishes the power 

of the pope in England. 153 









Till 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. 


PAGE 

1367. 

The battle of Najara. 

. 153 

1376. 

The Black Prince dies 

. 155 

1377. 

Edward dies 

. ib. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

1377. Richard II. succeeds to the 

throne .... 156 
1379. Wat Tyler’s insurrection . 157 
1385. Richard invades Scotland 

unsuccessfully . .158 

w He quarrels with his par¬ 
liament . . . 159 

1395. Henry of Lancaster in¬ 
trigues against Richard . 160 
1399. Richard is deposed, impri¬ 
soned, and murdered . 162 
The rise of English litera¬ 
ture, Chaucer, and of 
reform in religion under 
Wickliffe . . .163 


CHAPTER XIX. 

1399. Henry IV. succeeds to the 

crown . . . .164 

He persecutes the Lollards 165 

1401. The battle of Homiidon 

Hill .... 166 

1402. Owen Glendower excites a 

rising in Wales . . ib. 

1403. The earl of Northumber¬ 

land rebels and is de¬ 
feated at Shrewsbury . 167 

1412. Henry sends a force to in¬ 

vade France. . .169 

1413. And dies . . . . ib. 


CHAPTER XX. 

1413. Henry V. succeeds to the 

crown .... 170 

1414. Sir John Oldcastle is con¬ 

demned for heresy . 171 

1415. Henry invades France . 173 

The battle of Agincourt . 176 

1420. Henry is acknowledged heir 

to the French crown . 178 
1422. Fie dies .... 179 


CHAPTER XXI. 

1422. Henry VI. succeeds to the 

crown . . . .180 


A.n. PAGE 

1422. The duke of Bedford is 

appointed protector . 181 

Henry is proclaimed king 
of France . . . ib. 

1424. The battle of Vemeuil . 183 

1425. The battle of Herrings . 185 

1428. Joan of Arc saves Orleans ib. 

She is taken prisoner, and 
put to death. . . 190 


CHAPTER XXII. 

1435. A congress is held at Arras 

to establish peace . . 192 

1451. The English are driven out 

of nearly all France . 193 
The government is dis¬ 

turbed by faction at 
home .... 194 

1445. Henry marries Margaret 

of Anjou . . . 195 

The duke of York raises 
an insurrection . .198 

1459. He claims the crown . 199 

1460. He is defeated at Wake¬ 

field, and beheaded . 200 

1461. The battle of St. Alban’s . 201 
Henry is deposed, and Ed¬ 
ward IV. declared king . ib. 


CFIAPTER XXIII. 

1461. Margaret maintains Hen¬ 
ry’s cause ; the battle of 

Tow ton . . . 203 

Henry is taken prisoner at 
the battle of Hexham . 204 
1464. Lord Warwick turns against 

Edward . . . 205 

1469. Warwick takes Edward 

prisoner . . . 207 

1470. Warwick joins queen Mar¬ 

garet . . . . ib. 

Edward flees from the king¬ 
dom, and Henry is re¬ 
stored .... 208 

1471. Edward returns . . 209 

The battle of Barnet . 210 
The battle of Tewkesbury 211 
Henry VI. dies. . . ib. 

Quarrels between the dukes 

of Clarence and Glou¬ 
cester .... 212 
1479. Edward invades France, 
but is bribed by Louis 
XI. to return to England 213 




OF CONTENTS. 


A.D. PAGE 

1483. Edward dies . . . 214 

1475. Printing is introduced into 

England . . . 215 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

1483. Edward V. succeeds to the 

throne . . . .215 

The duke of Gloucester, 
Richard, is appointed 
protector . . . 216 

Richard begins to aim at 
the crown . . .217 

Puts many of the queen’s 
relations to death . 218 
Seizes the crown . .219 

Edward V. dies . . 220 

The earl of Richmond 
claims the throne . . ib. 

1485. He invades England. . 222 

Richard governs with great 
wisdom . . . ib. 

He is killed at the battle of 
Bosworth . . . 224 


CHAPTER XXV. 

1485. Henry VII. succeeds to 

the throne . . . 227 

Henry oppresses the York¬ 
ists .... 230 
He makes an alliance with 
Scotland . . . ib. 

1487. Simnel’s rebellion is 

crushed at the battle of 
Stoke .... 231 

1488. Henry interferes in the 

affairs of Brittany. . 233 

1489. The extortions of arch¬ 

bishop Morton . . 234 

1490. Henry invades France, but 

soon makes peace . . ib. 

1491. Warbe-k’s rebellion . . 235 

1495. Lord Audley is defeated on 

Blackheath . . . 237 

1496. Warbeck is defeated near 

Taunton, taken, and 
executed . . . ib. 

1497. Henry contracts foreign 

alliances . . . 238 

He passes several useful 
laws . . . . ib. 

He patronizes voyages of 
discovery . . . 239 

His daughter marries 
James of Scotland . ib. 


A.D. page 

1505. The profligate extortions 

of Empson and Dudley. 239 
Henry’s rapacity and injus¬ 
tice .... 240 

1509. He dies . . . . ib. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

1509. Henry VIII.'s early popu¬ 

larity .... 242 

1510. He marries Catharine of 

Arragon . . . 243 

1511. Empson and Dudley are 

executed . . . 244 

1512. Henry invades France . ib. 

1513. The battle of Guinegatte 

or the Spurs . . 245 

1512. The rise of Wolsey . . 246 

1513. The battle of Flodden 

Field .... 248 

1520. The Field of the Cloth of 

Gold . . . .250 

Charles V. of Spain visits 
England . . . 251 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

1521. Henry writes against Lu¬ 

ther .... 254 

1522. Henry declares war against 

France . . . 255 

1523. The rebellion of the con¬ 

stable Bourbon against 
Francis I. 257 

1527. Wolsey is received with 

great honour in France 260 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

1527. Henry falls in love with 

Anne Boleyn . . 260 

1529. He meditates divorcing 

queen Catharine . . 263 

Wolsey is deprived of his 

offices, and dies . . ib. 

1533. Henrv divorces Catharine, 

and marries Anne . 266 
Cranmer is made arch¬ 
bishop . . . . ib. 

Henry begins to attack the 
pope, and to assert his 
own supremacy . . 267 

1534. Pope Clement annuls 

Henry’s marriage with 
Anne .... 268 






X 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. PAGE 

1535. Henry throws off his alle¬ 

giance to the pope, and 
suppresses the monaste¬ 
ries, &c. . . . 269 

Cranmer revises Tindal’s 
translation of the Bible 271 
Henry’s cruel persecutions 272 

1536. Henry puts Anne to death, 

and marries Jane Se) r - 
mour .... 273 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

1537. Discontent caused by the 

Reformation . . 275 

The act of the Six Articles 
is passed . . . 276 

Queen Jane dies . . 277 

1539. Henry marries Anne of 

Cleves . . . ib. 

1540. He repudiates her, and 

marries Catharine How¬ 
ard .... 279 

1542. Queen Catharine is put to 

death . . . . ib. 

Henry declares war against 
Scotland . . . - ib. 

1543. He invades France . . 230 

1544. He marries Catharine Parr ib. 

1547. Henry dies . . . 283 

CHAPTER XXX. 

1547. Edward VI. succeeds to 

the throne . . . 287 

The duke of Somerset is 
appointed protector . ib. 
He invades Scotland, and 
gains the battle of Pin- 
key .... 288 
He advances the Reforma¬ 
tion .... 289 
1549. He is removed from his 
post in favour of lord 
Warwick . . .291 

1552. He is beheaded . . 293 

Edward settles the king¬ 
dom on lady Jane Grey 294 

1553. Edward dies, and is suc¬ 

ceeded by Mary . . ib. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

1553. She restores popery . . 296 

1554. She marries Philip of 

Spain . . . . ib. 


A.D. 

1554 


PAGE 


Wyatt raises a rebellion, 
which is suppressed . 297 
Lady Jane Grey is exe¬ 
cuted . . . . ib. 

1555. Cruel persecution of the 

reformers . • • 299 

Cranmer is put to death . 300 

Conspiracies are formed 
against the queen . . 301 

1557. War is declared against 

France . . . . ib. 

1558. The English gain the battle 

of St. Quentin, but lose 
Calais . . . . ib. 

Mary dies. 302 


GTTAPTF.R XXXTT. 


1558. Elizabeth succeeds to the 

throne .... 303 
She re-establishes the re¬ 
formed religion . . ib. 

Sir W. Cecil (lord Bur¬ 
leigh) becomes her mi¬ 
nister .... 304 

1559. Severe laws are passed 

against the Roman Ca¬ 
tholics . . . 306 

Elizabeth is jealous of 
Mary, queen of Scots . 307 
Violence of the Scotch re¬ 
formation . . . 308 

1561. Elizabeth tries to intercept 
Mary on her way from 
France .... 309 
Many suitors are proposed 
to the queen . . 310 

She favours the earl of 
Leicester . . . ib. 

1563. Elizabeth aids the French 

Huguenots . . .311 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

1565. The queen of Scots mar¬ 
ries Darnley . . 312 

1567. Darnlev is murdered . 314 
Mary marries Bothwell . 316 
She is defeated at Carberry 

Hill, and deposed . ib. 

1568. She is defeated at Langside ib. 

She takes refuge in Eng¬ 
land, and is treated as a 
prisoner . . . 317 

1570. The duke of Norfolk con¬ 
spires against the queen 
in favour of Mary . 318 




OF CONTENTS. 


XI 


A.D. PAGE 

1572. The pope excommunicates 

Elizabeth . . . 319 

Elizabeth tries to curb par¬ 
liament . . . 320 

1570. She encourages many fo¬ 
reign refugees, for the 
sake of religion, to set¬ 
tle in England . . 321 

1575. The Flemings offer her the 
sovereignty of the Ne¬ 
therlands . . . ib. 


CHAPTER XXXIY. 

1583. Archbishop Whitgift pro¬ 
secutes all Nonconfor¬ 
mists .... 323 
Leicester disgraces himself 
in an expedition to the 
Netherlands . . 324 

1586. Babington's conspiracy . 327 

1587. Mary, queen of Scots, is 

put to death . . 329 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

1588. The Spanish Armada is 

defeated . . . 334 

The earl of Essex displays 
his abilities in Portugal 335 
1598. Lord Burleigh dies . . 336 

Essex is Elizabeth’s chief 
favourite . . . 338 

She quarrels with him, and 
deprives him of the 

vice-royaltv of Ireland . ib. 

1601. He rises in insurrection, 

and is executed . . 339 

1602. Sully comes as ambassador 

from Henry IV. of 
France . . . ib. 

1603. Elizabeth dies. Her cha¬ 

racter .... 340 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

1603. James, king of Scotland, 

succeeds to the throne . 343 
He soon becomes unpopu¬ 
lar .... 344 
Cecil, lord Salisbury, is his 
minister . . . 345 

A conspiracy is formed 
against James by Ra- 
• leigh, &c. . . . 346 


A - D * PAGE 

1605. The Gunpowder Plot . 347 

1606. James proposes an union 

between England and 
Scotland . . . 349 

1610. Mountjoy puts down a re¬ 
bellion in Ireland . 350 
James’s devotion to fa¬ 
vourites; to the earl of 
Somerset . . . 351 

1614. To the duke of Bucking¬ 
ham .... 352 

1618. Raleigh’s expedition to 

Guiana . . . ib. 

He is executed . . 353 

1619. Prince Charles goes to 

Spain . . . . ib. 

1620. The elector palatine is 

expelled from his do¬ 
minions . . . 354 

War is declared against 
Spain and against the 
emperor . . . ib. 

1621. Lord Bacon is convicted 

of corruption . . ib. 

1625. James dies . . . 355 

The literature of the past 
age, Spenser, Shake¬ 
speare, Jonson, Hooker, 
and Bacon . . .356 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

1625. Charles I. succeeds to the 

throne .... 357 
He marries Plenrietta 
Maria of France . . 359 

The parliament begins to 
oppose him . . . 360 

His favourite, Bucking¬ 
ham, is unpopular . 361 

J 626. He dissolves parliament . ib. 
The new house of commons 
impeaches Buckingham ib. 
Charles imprisons some 
members, and dissolves 
parliament . . . 362 

Charles raises money by 
his own power . . ib. 

1627. He goes to war with France ib. 

Buckingham fails at Ro¬ 
chelle . . . . ib. 

The new parliament frames 
the petition of right . 363 

1628. Buckingham is assassinated ib. 

1629. The earl of Strafford gains 

the king’s favour . . 364 







CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


• • i 

XII 


A.D. PAGE 

1629. Oliver Cromwell speaks in 

parliament . . . 365 

Charles dissolves the par¬ 
liament . . . ib. 

He prosecutes some mem¬ 
bers of the house of 
commons . . . ib. 

He makes peace with 
France and Spain . 366 
He determines to govern 
without a parliament . ib. 

1630. Archbishop Laud has great 

influence . . . ib. 

The Court of HighCommis- 
sion is re-established . 367 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

1630. That and the Star Cham¬ 
ber exercise tyrannical 
power .... 368 

1637. Ship-money is resisted by 

Hampden . . . 369 

1638. Discontent is excited by 

the supposed popish ten¬ 
dency of Laud’s mea¬ 
sures . . . .370 

Riots arise in Scotland . ib. 

1640. Charles summons a new 

parliament . . . 371 

He dissolves it . . . 372 

Charles marches with an 
army to suppress the 
disturbances in Scot¬ 
land .... 373 
He summons a fresh (the 
long) parliament . . ib. 

1641. It impeaches Strafford and 

Laud .... 374 
Strafford is executed. . 376 
Differences arise among the 
commons . . . 377 

Charles visits Scotland . 378 
The rise of Montrose into 
his favour . . .379 

A rebellion breaks out in 
Ireland . . . . ib. 

The Irish massacre the Eng¬ 
lish Protestants . . 380 

The violent members of the 
commons frame a re¬ 
monstrance . . . ib. 

1642. Charles endeavours to seize 

the five members . . 381 

Violent measures of the 
commons . . . 382 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

A.D. PAGE 

1642. The parliament makes war 

on the king . . . 383 

Sends commissioners to 
York to treat with 
Charles . . . 384 

Charles raises his standard 
at Nottingham . . ib. 

The battle of Edgehill . 385 
Charles fixes his head¬ 
quarters at Oxford . 386 

1643. Hampden is killed at Chal- 

grove .... 387 
The parliament is divided 
about the continuance 
of the war . . . 388 

The battle of Newbury. 

Lord Falkland’s death . 390 
Newcastle beats Fairfax at 
Atherton Moor . . 391 

The parliament gains the aid 
of the Scots, by agreeing 
to the Solemn League 
and Covenant . . ib. 

The parliament oppresses 
the episcopal clergy . 392 

1644. The king summons a par¬ 

liament to Oxford . ib. 
The Scots invade England 393 


CHAPTER XL. 

1644. The battle of Marston Moor 394 
Essex’s army surrenders in 

Cornwall . . . 396 

Montrose performs great 
exploits in Scotland . 397 

1645. He gains the victories of 

Inverlochy, Kilsyth, &c. 398 
He is surprised and routed 
at Philiphaugh . . 399 

Conferences for peace are 
opened at Uxbridge 
without effect . . 400 

Laud is executed . . ib. 

Parliament passes the Self- 
denying Ordinance . 402 

Charles is defeated at 
Naseby . . . 403 


CHAPTER XLI. 

1645. The queen and prince of 

Wales flee to France . 403 

1646. Charles goes to Scotland . 404 




OF CONTENTS 


Xlll 


A.D. PAGE 

1647. The Scots sell him to the 

parliament . . . 405 

Cromwell and the army 
become masters of the 
parliament . . . ib. 

The king is removed from 
Holmby to Reading . 406 
He flees to the Isle of 
Wight .... 408 

1648. The Scots and Welsh rise 

in behalf of Charles, 
but are put down by 
Cromwell . . . 409 

Parliament opens a nego¬ 
tiation with Charles . ib. 
Cromwell removes him to 
Hurst .... 410 
Cromwell turns out the par¬ 
liament for showing a 
willingness to agree with 
the king . . .413 

1649. The army brings the king 

to trial . . . . ib. 

The king is put to death . 413 


CHAPTER NLII. 

1649. Severity of the new govern¬ 

ment to the Royalists . 417 
Cromwell subdues Ireland 
with great cruelty . 419 

1650. Charles II. crosses over to 

Scotland . . . 420 

Montrose is put to death . ib. 
Leslie is defeated by Crom¬ 
well at Dunbar . . 421 

1651. Charles is crowned king of 

Scotland . . . 422 

He is defeated at Worcester 423 
Foreign powers recognize 
the commonwealth . 425 
Cromwell goes to war with 

Holland . . . 427 

1652. Blake defeats Van Tromp. 428 

1653. Cromwell turns out the 

parliament . . . 429 

Summons a new (Bare- 
bone’s) parliament . 430 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

1653. Cromwell is appointed pro¬ 

tector .... 430 

1654. Establishes the High Court 

of Justice . . . 431 

1655. Dissolves parliament . 433 


A.D. PAGE 

1655. Oppresses the episcopal 

clergy .... 434 

1656. The brother of the Por¬ 

tuguese ambassador is 
executed . . . 435 

Cromwell makes war on 
Spain .... 436 
Blake reduces the deys of 
Tripoli and Algiers to 
submission . . . 437 

Cromwell summons a new 
parliament . . v 438 

Excludes many members . 439 
1657- Is afraid to assume the title 

of king. . . . 440 

1658. Acquires Dunkirk . ; 442 

Dies.443 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

1658. Is succeeded by his son 

Richard . . . 445 

Differences arise between 
the generals . . . 446 

Monk’s intr'gues . . 447 

1659. The Rump is recalled to 

parliament . . . 448 

Richard resigns the pro¬ 
tectorate . . . ib. 

The violence of the army 
terrifies the nation . 449 

1660. Monk arrives in London, 

and declares for a free 
parliament . . . 451 

Charles II. is restored . 452 


CHAPTER XLV. 

1660. The regicides are executed 457 

1661. Episcopacy is established 

in Scotland . . . ib. 

General profligacy spreads 
over the kingdom . . 459 

1662. Charles marries Catharine 

of Braganza . . . 460 

1665. War is declared against 

Holland . . . 461 

The Dutch sail up the 

Thames . . . 462 

The plague desolates Lon¬ 
don .... 463 
The fire of London . . ib. 

1667. Lord Clarendon is dis¬ 
graced .... 464 
The Cabal has all the in¬ 
fluence .... 465 






XIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. PAGE 

1668. The triple alliance is 

formed .... 468 
The duke of York becomes 
a Roman Catholic . ib. 
Charles becomes a pen¬ 
sioner of Louis XIV. . 469 


CHAPTER XLYI. 

1672. War again declared against 

Holland . . . 470 

Charles’s indulgence to 
Nonconformists . .471 

1674. Shaftesbury begins to ex¬ 

cite the people against 
papists .... 472 

1678. The popish plot . . 475 

1679. The exclusion bill is in¬ 

troduced . . .476 

1681. Temple’s plan of govern¬ 

ment .... 477 
The names of Whig and 
Tory arise . . . 478 

1679—1680. Lauderdale’s cruel¬ 
ties in Scotland . . 479 

1682. The Rye House plot . 480 

1683. Russell and Sidney are 

executed . . .481 

1685. Charles dies . . . 482 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

1685. James II. succeeds . . 484 

He hears mass publicly . 485 
Monmouth's rebellion . 487 
The battle of Sedgemoor . 488 
Monmouth is executed . 489 
The cruelties of Kirke and 

Jefferies . . . ib. 

1686. The king tries to re-esta¬ 

blish popery . . 490 

1687. Attacks the privileges of 

the universities . . 492 

1688. The impeachment of the 

bishops . . . 495 

The English nobles invite 
the prince of Orange to 
England . . . 497 

He lands at Torbay, No¬ 
vember 5 499 

James flies from the king- 
dom .... 501 

1689. He is deposed / . . 504 

Progress of science and 

literature . . . 505 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

A.D. PAGE 

1689. The prince of Orange and 

princess Mary become 
king and queen . . 506 

William becomes unpopu¬ 
lar from his preference 
of foreigners . . 508 

James raises his standard 
in Ireland . . .510 

The siege of Londonderry 511 
The battle of Bantry Bay . 513 

1690. The battle of Beachy Head ib. 
The battle of the Bovne . 514 

1691. The capitulation of Lime¬ 

rick .... 515 
1689. The battle of Ivilliecrankie 518 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

1689. Reversals of sentences in¬ 

flicted in James’s time . 520 

1690. Lord Preston’s conspiracy. 522 
Marlborough intrigues 

against William . . 523 

1692. Battle of La Hogue . . 525 

The massacre of Glencoe . 526 

1694. Montague, chancellor of 

the exchequer, origi¬ 
nates the national debt. 528 
The triennial bill is passed 529 

1695. Newspapers begin to be 

published . . . ib. 


CHAPTER L. 

1695. Sir Isaac Newton is made 

master of the Mint . 532 

1694. Talmash’sattemptonBrest 

fails . . . . ib. 

Queen Mary dies . . 533 

1695. William takes Namur . ib. 
Sir John Fenwick’s plot . 534 

1697. The peace of Ryswick . ib. 
Peter of Russia visits Eng¬ 
land .... 535 

1698. Sir G. Rooke bombards 

Copenhagen . . 537 

Disputes arise about the 
Spanish succession . ib. 

1700. The succession to the Eng¬ 

lish throne is settled on 
the house of Brunswick 539 

1701. James II. dies . . ib. 

1702. William dies . . . ib. 






OF CONTENTS. 


XY 


CHAPTER LT. 

A.D. PAGE 

1702. Anne succeeds to the throne 541 
War is declared against 
France . . . 542 

Rooke destroys the galleons 
in Yigo Bay . . ib. 

1704. The battles of Donawerth 

and Blenheim . . 543 

Rooke takes Gibraltar . 544 

1705. Lord Peterborough gains 

great advantages in 

Spain .... 545 

1706. The battle of Ramillies . 546 

1707. The battle of Almanza . ib. 

The union between Eng¬ 
land and Scotland . 547 

1708. The battle of Oudenarde . 548 
Marlborough takes Lisle . 549 


CHAPTER LII. 

1709. The battle of Malplaquet . 552 

1710. Conferences of Gertruy- 

denberg . . . ib. 

The trial of Saclieverell . 553 
Harley becomes prime 
minister . . . 554 

The battle of Almenara . ib. 
The battle of Villaviciosa . 555 

1712. Marlborough and Walpole 

are disgraced . . 556 

1713. The peace of Utrecht . 557 

1714. Queen Anne dies . . 559 


CHAPTER LIII. 

1714. George I. succeeds . . 561 

1715. Sir R. Walpole becomes 

minister . . . 562 

Louis XIV. dies . . 563 

Mar raises the Highlands 
in rebellion . . 564 

The battle of Sheriffmuir . ib. 

1716. Theseptennial bill is passed 566 
1720. The South Sea Bubble . 569 

The young Pretender is 
born . . . .571 

1724. Disturbance in Ireland 

about Wood’s coinage . 573 
1727. George I. dies . . .575 


CHAPTER LIV. 

1727. George II. succeeds to the 

throne . . . 575 


A.D. PAGE 

1730. Peace is made with Spain 578 

Pulteney heads the opposi¬ 
tion . . . . ib. 

1731. Alliancemade with Austria 580 

1736. The Porteous riot . . 583 

The prince of Wales mar¬ 
ries .... 584 

1739. A fresh war with Spain . 586 
Pitt begins to be eminent. 587 

1740. Anson’s expedition against 

Peru .... 589 
Vernon takes Porto Bello . ib. 

1741. The king favours Frederic 

of Prussia’s attack on 
Maria Teresa, but Wal¬ 
pole espouses the cause 
of the queen . . 591 

1742. Walpole resigns office . 592 

CHAPTER LV. 

1742. Lord Wilmington becomes 

prime minister . . 594 

1743. The battle of Dettingen . 596 
Mr. Pelham becomes prime 

minister . . . 597 

1744. War with France . . 598 

1745. Alliance made with Hol¬ 

land and Austria . . 599 

Battle of Fontenoy . . ib. 

The young Pretender lands 
in Scotland . . 600 

He enters Edinburgh, and 
beats Cope at Preston 
Pans .... 603 
He invades England, and 
reaches Derby . . 604 

1746. He retreats, beats Hawley 

at Falkirk, but is de¬ 
feated at Culloden . 607 


CHAPTER LVI. 

1751. The prince of Wales dies . 610 
The calendar is reformed . oil 
1754. Mr. Pelham dies . .612 

1756. Minorca is taken . .615 

Byng is shot . . • 617 

1757. Pitt becomes secretary of 

state .... 620 


CHAPTER LVII. 

1751. Sketch of the rise of our 

Indian power . . 620 

1752. Clive surprises Arcot . 622 









XVI 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. PAGE 

17-56. The Black Hole atCalcutta 624 
1/57. Clive takes Chandernagore 625 
The battle of Plassey . 626 

1760. The battle of Wandewash 628 

1761. Coote takes Pondicherry . ib. 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

1757- Frederic of Prussia begins 

the seven years’ war . 628 
The duke of Cumberland 
concludes the conven¬ 
tion of Closter Leven . 629 

1758. The British invade Canada 630 

1759. The battle of Quebec . 632 
Admiral Hawke defeats 

Conflans . . . 633 

The battle of Minden . 634 

1760. George II. dies . . 635 


CHAPTER LIX. 

1760. George III. begins to 

reign .... 636 

1761. Influence of lord Bute . 637 

Pitt resigns office . . 639 

1762. War with Spain . . 640 

Advantages gained in the 

East and West Indies . ib. 

Peace is made witli France 
and Spain . . 641 

1763. The “North Briton” . 642 

G. Grenville succeeds lord 

Bute as minister . . ib. 

1765. Stamp duties are imposed 

on America . . 645 

Lord Rockingham’s first 
ministry . . . 647 

The rise of Burke . . 648 

The American stamp act 
is repealed . . . 650 


CHAPTER LX. 

1766. The king turns out the 

ministry, and Pitt suc¬ 
ceeds to office as lord 
Chatham . . . 655 

1767. Chatham falls sick . . 656 

The ministry reimposes 

the American stamp act 657 

1768. Riots in America . . ib. 

Wilkes is expelled the 

house of commons . 658 
The Letters of Junius . 659 


A.D. PAGE 

1770. Lord North becomes mi¬ 
nister .... 659 

1773. The rise of C. J. Fox .661 
Discontent at Boston, in 

America . . . ib. 

1774. A bill brought in to 

punish Boston . . 662 

1775. War with America . . 664 

Washington is appointed 

the American general . ib. 


CHAPTER LXI. 

1775. The battle of Bunker’s 

Hill . . . . 666 

1776. The Americans proclaim 

their independence . 667 
The battle of Brooklyn. 
Howe takes New York ib. 

1777. The battle of Brandywine 669 
Burgoyne capitulates at 

Saratoga . . .670 

1778. Death of Chatham . . 672 

The French send aid to the 

Americans . . . 673 

Naval battle between Kep- 
pel and D’Orvilliers . 674 

1779. Spain declares war against 

England . . . ib. 

Paul Jones menaces Edin¬ 
burgh . . . . ih. 

1780. Protestant riots in London 676 
Rodney defeats the Spanish 

fleet .... 677 
The battle of Camden, in 
America . . . ib. 

1781. The battles of the Cowpens 

and of Guildford . . ib. 

And of Eutau Springs . 678 
Lord Cornwallis capitulates 
at York town . . ib. 

First speech of William 
Pitt .... 679 

1782. Lord North is succeeded 

as minister by lord 
Rockingham . . ib. 

The rise of Grattan . . 682 

Measures of indulgence 
towards Ireland are 

passed . . . . ib. 

Burke’s bill for economical 
reform passed . . ib. 

The independence of 

America acknowledged. 683 
Lord Rockingham dies, and 
is succeeded by lord 
Shelburne . . . ib. 







OF CONTENTS 


AD. PAGE 

1782. Rodney gains a victory off 

Jamaica . . . 684 

The Spaniards raise the 
siege of Gibraltar . ib. 

1783. Peace is signed with Ame¬ 

rica, France, and Spain ib. 

CHAPTER LXII. 

1783. Lord Shelburne is suc¬ 
ceeded by the coalition 
ministry . . . 686 

Pitt introduces a reform 
bill . . . .687 

1763. The affairs of India. The 

battle of Buxar . . 688 

1765. Clive introduces great re¬ 
forms .... 689 
1774. Clive kills himself . . 690 

Warren Hastings’ career 
as governor-general . ib. 
1781. Sir Eyre Coote defeats 
Hyder Ali at Porto 
Novo .... 693 
1783. Fox introduces his India 

bill .... 696 


CHAPTER LXIII. 

1783. The coalition ministry is 

turned out by the king, 
and Pitt becomes mi¬ 
nister .... 697 

1784. He remodels the Indian 

government . . . 700 

1785. He remodels the taxation 

of this country . . 701 

1788. The impeachment of War¬ 

ren Hastings . . 703 

The question of the slave- 
trade, and exertions of 
Wilberforce . . 705 

The question of the regency 707 

CHAPTER LXIY. 

1789. The French revolution 

breaks out . . .708 

1793. War is declared against 

France . . .712 

The English take Valen¬ 
ciennes . . . ib. 

1794. The English army returns 

home .... 713 
Lord Howe's victory, and 
admiral Hotham’s . 714 


XV11 

A.D. PAGE 

1795. Lord Bridport’s victory . 714 
Several of the Whigs join 

Pitt’s ministry . . 715 

Prosecution of Horne 
Tooke, and others . ib. 

1796. Pitt offers peace in vain . 716 

1797. The victories of St. Vin¬ 

cent and Camperdown . 717 
The naval mutiny . . ib. 

Burke dies . . . 718 

Pitt raises a volunteer corps 719 

1798. The battle of the Nile . 720 
The Irish rebellion under 

lord E. Fitzgerald . 722 

CHAPTER LXV. 

1799. Malta is taken . . . 724 

Buonaparte proposes peace ib. 

1800. The northern confederacy 

is formed . . . 725 

1801. The repeal of the union . 726 
Pitt resigns office, and is 

succeeded by Mr. Ad¬ 
dington . . . ib. 

The battle of Copenhagen . 727 
The battle of Alexandria . 728 
Buonaparte prepares to in¬ 
vade England . . 729 

1802. The peace of Amiens . ib. 

1803. War is renewed . . 730 

1804. Pitt returns to office . 731 

Capture of the galleons, 

and war with Spain . 733 

1805. Nelson pursues the French 

fleet .... 734 
Sir R. Calder’s action . ib. 
The battle of Trafalgar . 735 

1806. Death of Pitt . . . 737 


CHAPTER LXVI. 

1806. Lord Grenville becomes 

prime minister . . 739 

The battle of Maida . . 740 

Death of Fox . . . 741 

1807. The slave-trade is abo¬ 

lished . . . . ib. 

Disasters at Buenos Ayres 742 
Sir J. Duckworth’s expe¬ 
dition to Constantinople ib. 
The duke of Portland suc¬ 
ceeds lord Grenville . 743 
1793. Lord Cornwallis in India 

defeats Tippoo Sail) . 744 
1799. Lord Wellesley becomes 

governor of India. . ib. 

a 






XY111 


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 


A.D. PAGE 

1800. Tippoo Saib is defeated and 

killed . . . .744 

1803. Lord Wellesley attacks 

the Mahrattas . . 745 

The battles of Delhi, 
Laswaree, and Assaye . ib. 

1807. The Beilin decrees, and 

the orders in council . 746 
The expedition to Copen¬ 
hagen .... 747 


CHAPTER LXVII. . 

1807. Napoleon invades Portu¬ 

gal ... 748 

1808. And Spain, making his bro¬ 

ther king . . . 749 

Sir A. Wellesley is sent to 
Spain . . . .750 

The battle of Vimeira, and 
convention of Cintra . ib. 

1809. The retreat to, and battle 

of Corunna . . . 752 

Mr. Perceval becomes 
prime minister . . 753 

Lord Cochrane destroys 
the French ships in the 
Basque Roads . . ib. 

Wellesley returns to Por¬ 
tugal, takes Oporto, and 
gains the battle of Tala- 
vera .... 754 
The expedition to Wal- 
clieren .... 755 

1810. Wellington gains the battle 

of Busaco, and occupies 
the lines of Torres Ve- 
dras . . . .756 

The king becomes insane. 

A regency is appointed. 757 

1811. The battles of Barrosa, of 

Fuentes d’Onore, and of 
Albuera . . . 758 

1812. Wellington takes Ciudad 

Rodrigo and Badajoz, 
gains the battle of Sala¬ 
manca, and takes Ma¬ 
drid .... 762 
Mr. Perceval is assas¬ 
sinated, and succeeded 
by lord Liverpool. . 763 

1813. The battle of Vittoria . 764 
Wellington forces the Py¬ 
renees, and enters Spain 765 

1814. Gains the battles of Orthez 

and Toulouse . . 766 

Peace is signed . . .767 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 

A.D. PAGE 

1812. The Americans declare war 

against England . .788 

1814. General Ross takes AVash- 

ington . . . . ib. 

Peace is signed at Ghent . 769 
The new corn-law . . ib. 

1815. Napoleon returns from 

Elba . . .770 

Battles of Quatre Bras and 
Waterloo . . .771 

Napoleon is taken prisoner, 
and sent to St. Helena, 
where he dies . . 777 


CHAPTER LX1X. 

1816. Distress on the return of 

peace .... 778 

1817. Deatli ofthe princess Char¬ 

lotte . . . . ib. 

1819. Birth of the princess Vic¬ 
toria .... 779 
1816. Battle of Algiers . . ib. 

Lord Hastings subdues the 
Mahrattas . . .780 

Revision of our criminal 
code .... 781 

1819. Seditious disturbances arise 782 

1820. Death of George III. . ib. 
His reign the Augustan 

age of England . .784 


CHAPTER LXX. 

1820. George IV. succeeds to the 

throne .... 788 
Thistlewood’s conspiracy . 789 
The queen's trial . . 790 

1822. Death of lord Castlereagh . 791 

1823. Canning’s foreign policy . 792 

1826. An expedition is sent to 

Lisbon . . .793 

1827. The duke of York dies . ib. 

Lord Liverpool is seized 

with paralysis . . ib. 

Canning becomes prime 
minister, and dies . ib. 
Lord Goderich becomes 
prime minister . . 795 

The battle of Navarino . 7 96 
1826. The Burmese are subdued 

in India . . . ib. 

Bhurtpore is taken . . 797 






OF CONTENTS 


XIX 


A.D. PAGE 

1828. The duke of Wellington 

becomes minister . . 798 

1829. Roman Catholic emancipa¬ 

tion is carried . . 799 

1830. George IV. dies . . 800 

\ 

CHAPTER LXXI. 

1830. William IY. succeeds to 

the throne . . . 801 

The duke of Wellington is 
succeeded by lord Grey 802 

1831. The reform bill . . 803 

Riots in many parts of 

England . . . 804 

1832. Outrages in Ireland . . 806 

Abolition of slavery . . 807 

1834. The new poor-law . . 808 

Lord Grey is succeeded by 
lord Melbourne . . ib. 

1837. AVilliam IV. dies . . 809 


CHAPTER LXXII. 

1837. Queen Victoria succeeds . 809 

1838. Outbreak in Canada . 810 

1839. Rise of the Chartists, riot 

at Newport . . . 812 

A British fleet sent to the 
Levantagainst Mehemet 
Ali . . . . 813 

1841. Insurrection in Cabul . 815 
Horrors of the retreat from 

AfFghanistan . .816 

1842. Pollock relieves Sale, and 

takes Cabul . .818 

1843. Conquest of Scinde by sir 

C. Napier . . . 821 

War in Gwalior . . 822 

1845. War with the Sikhs . . 823 


A.n. page 

1846. Battles of Moodkee, Fee- 
rozshuhur, Aliwal, and 
Sobraon . . . ib. 

1848. The revolt of Mooltan . 824 

War of the Punjab . . 825 

Battles of Chillianwallah 

and Goojerat . . ib. 

1849. Annexation of the Punjab ib. 

1840. War with China . . ib. 

Sir James Brooke esta 
Wishes himself at Sara¬ 
wak, in Borneo . . 826 


CHAPTER LXXIII. 

1840. Marriage of the queen . 827 

1841. Peel becomes prime mi¬ 

nister .... 827 
1846. Repeal of the corn-laws . 828 
Lord John Russell be¬ 
comes prime minister . 829 
1848. Smith O'Brien’s outbreak 

in Ireland . . . 830 

1850. Death of Peel . . . 831 

1852. Death of the duke of Wel¬ 

lington . . . ib. 

1853. Lord Aberdeen becomes 

minister . . . . 833 

1854. War with Russia . . 834 

The battle of the Alma . 835 
Siege of Sebastopol . . 836 

Battle of Inkermann . 837 
Great distress of the Bri¬ 
tish army . . . 838 

Miss Nightingale . . 839 

Lord Palmerston becomes 
prime minister . . ib. 

1855. Sebastopol is taken . . 840 

1856. Peace is signed at Paris . ib. 

Conclusion . . . 841 

















































































































. 







































THE 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER I. 

Ciyilization and literature were, in ancient times, so en¬ 
tirely confined to the south-eastern portion of Europe, and 
to the parts of Asia bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, 
from which the Europeans originally derived them, that it 
is not surprising that the further a country lies from those 
regions, the slighter should be the knowledge attainable of 
its early history. And this is eminently the case with our 
own island, known by no distinctive name to the Greeks, 
and the very last country invaded by the all-conquering 
ambition of the Romans. The monks, indeed, who are our 
earliest chroniclers, and who caught from the classic 
historians (it was all that they did learn from them) the 
desire to dignify their theme by tracing the history of their 
country back to a remote antiquity, give a minute account 
of Brutus, the great-grandson of iEneas, coming, under the 
guidance of Diana, to the island then known as Albion, and 
inhabited only by a few giants, calling it Britain after his 
own name, and founding London at the time when Eli 
was judge in Judea. York arose as the metropolis of the 
northern part of the kingdom while Solomon was building 
the temple, and Lear was furnishing a subject for the most 
sublime of Shakespeare’s tragedies, at the same time that 
the wolf on the banks of the Tiber was nursing the future 

B 






B.C. 

54. 


2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

founders of the city, from which, in after ages, his de¬ 
scendants 'were to receive their conquerors and their mis¬ 
sionaries. But, not to dwell on childish fables such as these, 
w r e must admit, that beyond the fact of the existence of our 
country, and of its containing tin mines, which were worked 
by the Phoenicians, probably not much later than the era of 
Solomon, nothing whatever was known of it till Csesar, after 
subduing Gaul, sailed across to the white cliffs, visible from 
the opposite shore, and extended the Roman dominion by 
one more conquest, which soon became popular among the 
Roman ladies, as furnishing them a larger supply of pearls 
than they could then obtain from the deeper waters of the 
Eastern Ocean; and with the epicures, on account of the ex¬ 
quisite oysters from the Kentish coast, which speedily became 
an established article of luxury at patrician tables. "We 
need not dwell on the gallant but unsuccessful resistance of 
Boadicea and Caractacus; or the skill with which Agricola 
gradually brought the whole island under the Roman yoke, 
though the conquerors soon retired from the northern 
districts, building a wall, traces of which are to be seen to 
this day, to check the irruptions of the Scots, who even at 
that early period had begun to manifest their aptitude 
and inclination for border warfare; and before the end of 
the fourth century, at the beginning of which the armies 
in Britain had given an emperor to the world in the person 
of the great Constantine, they finally quitted the island 
altogether. 

The Britons were not more tranquil, or more happy, for 
their deliverance from their masters, whom they had learnt 
rather to look upon as their defenders. The Piets and 
Scots, whose names 1 denote the unsettled and piratical 
habits of their lives, and one of which has given a lasting 
title to the district which they inhabited, disregarded the 
barrier opposed to them by the wall of Severus, overran the 
frontier, and, tempted by a more genial climate, spread 
themselves with rapid progress over the wdiole island. The 
Britons solicited the Romans to return to their protection, 
but JEtius, the Roman emperor, was too much occupied 
in endeavouring to defend Italy itself from Attila, to be 
able to spare any attention to a distant and now abandoned 
province. Repulsed by the Romans, they implored the aid 

1 Pidich meant a plunderer; Scuite , a wanderer; but this etymology is dis¬ 
puted, and is very doubtful. 


THE SAXONS. 


3 


of the Saxons, the most powerful and warlike of the German 
tribes.* The Saxons were willing enough to come to their 
assistance, and probably would not have waited long for an 
invitation, for they were a poor and ambitious race, and 
Britain had already a reputation for riches and fertility, 
with which they had become acquainted in the descents 
that they had made, even in the time of the Romans, upon 
their southern and eastern coasts. They now embraced 
with eagerness so fair a pretext for crossing the sea in more 
formidable numbers, and gave the Piets and Scots a bloody 
overthrow in Lincolnshire, which for a time drove them 
back to their own territories. But the fable of the horse, 
the stag, and the man, was realized by the result of their 
victory; the Britons were indeed delivered from their former 
enemies, but it was only to fall under the yoke of far more 
severe and more permanent masters. 

Hengist and Horsa, two brothers who led the first Saxon 
force which accepted the invitation, speedily overran the 
whole island. The chroniclers differ in their account of the 
details of the conquest, nor can we now decide whether Yor- 
tigern, the British king, was seduced to coalesce with the in¬ 
vaders by his love forHengist’s daughter,Rowena; or whether 
he was treacherously slain, with the most powerful of his no¬ 
bles, in a banquet at Stonehenge, w r hich having been erected 
by the Druids, the ancient priests of the island, looked then, 
as now, in massive grandeur over the extensive wilds of Salis¬ 
bury Plain. It is certain that after his victory Hengist sent 
to Saxony for additional bodies of his countrymen; and that 
other bands of invaders from the neighbouring districts of 
Germany, whose ambition and covetousness were excited by 
the report of his easy conquest, descended on different parts 
of the British coast; and, though so many successive in¬ 
vasions stimulated the natives to some resistance, in no 
very great length of time completed the subjection of the 
whole island except Wales and Cornwall, and parcelled it 
out into the seven kingdoms of Wessex, Sussex, and Essex, 
(the territories of the West, South, and East Saxons,) Kent, 
Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumberland, which were 
knowm for near three hundred years as the Saxon 
Heptarchy 2 . 

The petty states into which the island was now divided 

2 Sharon Turner says it ought rather to be called the Octarchy, as Northum¬ 
berland consisted of the two kingdoms Deira and Beraicia. 

B 2 


A.D. 

449. 




4 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

soon forgot their common origin in the jealousies to which 
their proximity and the absence of other enemies gave rise. 
And the whole country was desolated with incessant wars of 
so little importance or interest, that Milton pronounced 
that they no more deserved a particular narrative than the 
skirmishes of kites and crows; till, at the beginning of the 
ninth century, Egbert, king of Wessex, whose dominions in¬ 
cluded Devonshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Berkshire, 
subdued the kingdoms of Kent and Essex, and incorporated 
them with his own dominions, and brought the others 
into such a state of subjection, that he has often been 
called, though incorrectly, the founder of the English 
monarchy. 

But during the continuance of the Heptarchy one event 
of a different character had taken place, destined to exert a 
more powerful and lasting influence over the nation than 
the might of any barbarian warrior, or the wisdom of any 
human statesman. The religion of Jesus Christ had, some 
generations previously, been introduced into Gaul, not in¬ 
deed in the pure form which the learning of zealous 
theologians and the simplicity of earnest worshippers have 
combined to establish among ourselves at the present day; 
not untainted with relics of heathen philosophy, nor wholly 
purified from the fiercer stain of heathen superstition ; but 
still the name of Christ was recognized throughout Gaul, as 
that of the Saviour of mankind; and the leading doctrines 
of the Christian faith had expelled the fierce fanaticism of 
the Druids. Some knowledge of it had also reached Britain. 
Morgan or Pelagius, the author of the heresy still branded 
under his name in our articles, was born among the 
mountains of Wales, and preachers from Gaul had crossed 
the Channel to combat the spread of his opinions among his 
countrymen. There was even a settled form of Church 
government among the Welsh; they had convents and 
monasteries, bishops and an archbishop, wholly independent of 
the see of Eome; but as their doctrines were in some respects 
heretical, and their practices, in many points, at variance 
with those of the Boman Church, the pope scarcely 
admitted their right to the name of Christians at all. In 
Scotland, too, Colurnba, a missionary from Ireland (where, 
as in Wales, there already existed an independent Christian 
Church), had converted many of the Piets and Scots, and on 
the small and rocky island of Iona had built a school and 


ETHELBEHT. 



5 


a convent, the ruins of which still preserve his memory as 
the first introducer of Christianity in those regions. 

It was no longer to be confined to the outskirts of the 
island. Ethelbert, king of Kent, in the latter portion of the 
sixth century, married Bertha, daughter of Caribert, king of 
Paris, and a descendant of Clovis, the first Christian 
monarch of Gaul. It had been stipulated that she should 
be allowed the free exercise of her religion, and she brought 
with her a bishop as her chaplain. She was eager to lead 
her husband and his subjects to embrace the religion on 
which her own hopes were founded, and her gentle though 
firm character soon obtained for her such influence, not only 
over him, but over all who came in contact with her, that 
Gregory the Great, who was pope at the time, conceived 
hopes of realizing a project which he had entertained, even 
before his elevation to that dignity, of achieving the con¬ 
version of the whole nation. Many years before he had 
seen some British captives on sale in the slave-market at 
Home, and being told, on inquiry, that they were Angles, 
replied, in reference to their fair skins and blooming com¬ 
plexions, that they would be angels if they were only 
Christians. He would at once have set out himself on a 
mission which he was far from imagining to be free from 
danger, had not his countrymen been more impressed with 
the perils to be encountered than he was himself; and had 
not they, looking forward with confidence to his promotion 
in his own land, compelled him to remain at home and await 
it. The papal dignity prevented him from resuming the 
idea of undertaking the enterprise in person, but he selected 
a Benedictine monk named Augustine, and sent him with a 
chosen body of subordinate assistants, to bring a nation so 
highly favoured in all personal endowments into the true 
fold. Ethelbert did not at once profess himself a disciple of 
the preacher. At first he would not even trust himself a.d 
under the same roof with him, but heard him discourse in 
the open air, that he might be less under the power of his 
witchcraft, if that should prove to be the art on which he 
really relied; but the assent which he withheld from his 
arguments was yielded to the miracles which he professed 
to work ; and at last he consented to be baptized. Many of 
his subjects, as was natural, followed the king’s example, 
and he would not have scrupled to compel the obedience of 
the rest by force, had not Augustine, wiser than his succes- 



6 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

832. 


[CH. 

sors, taught him that their belief, to be acceptable, must bo 
voluntary, and that violence and cruelty were wholly incon¬ 
sistent with the religion of the Prince of Peace. 

The example of so important a state, and the matrimonial 
connexions which the different kings of the Heptarchy formed 
with each other, gradually led to the introduction of Christi¬ 
anity into all the separate kingdoms; and long before the 
time of Egbert, paganism had been wholly driven from the 
land. 

Egbert was not allowed to reap the peaceful enjoyment 
of his now ample dominions. Even before his birth, 
pirates from the Baltic Sea, called Danes in Britain, and 
Normans, or inhabitants of Norway, in Gaul, had made 
descents on the coast on each side of the Channel; but in 
Britain they had met with a severe repulse, and had 
been driven back to their own country with considerable 
slaughter. Soon after his accession they returned in more 
formidable numbers; one year they pillaged the isle of 
Sheppey; another year they landed in Devonshire, where 
the principal esplanade at Teigmnouth, still by its name of 
“the Den,” preserves the memory of their inroads. While 
Egbert lived they were constantly defeated and expelled; 
but under his less warlike son, Ethelwolf, they met with 
greater success, and, though still gallantly resisted for a time, 
they at last effected a permanent settlement in the isles of 
Thanet and Sheppey, from which as their head-quarters they 
extended their devastation over the southern districts of the 
kingdom. They were not in reality altogether aliens from 
the Saxon race, and the language of each nation, though not 
identical, was understood by the other; but the conversion 
of the Saxons in Britain to Christianity had obliterated 
from the minds of the Danes all recollection of their com¬ 
mon descent. Their connexion with the German Saxons 
they looked upon as a far more binding tie; and the 
atrocities by which Charlemagne had sought to compel those 
tribes to embrace Christianity, had made the Danes look 
upon all Christians as enemies, deserving similar severities 
at their hands. 

Ethelwolf was a weak and superstitious bigot, contented 
in such a time of danger to surrender the government of 
those parts of the kingdom which were most exposed to the 
now incessant attacks of the enemy, to his eldest son, 
Athelstan, while he made pilgrimages to Italy, and sought 


I.] ATHELSTAN. 7 

to gain the favour of heaven by profuse grants to the 
Church in Eome and to the pope himself. 

One important > and salutary measure was at the same 
time extorted from him for the Church in England. The 
kingdom had been divided into parishes by Honorius, arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, nearly two centuries before, but, as 
yet, the priests of those parishes had no endowment. 
There might be a difficulty in proving logically that the 
divine appropriation of the tithe of all the land as holy 
unto the Lord, in the time of Moses, was intended to endure 
through all ages, and in every country; but there could be 
no question that it was not only politically important, but 
also strictly just and equitable, that they who devoted their 
lives to the ministration of the offices of the Church should 
be secured a decent and adequate provision for their main¬ 
tenance. And though that provision has, in our own time, 
been greatly curtailed, owing to the indifference of some 
and the cupidity of others, it cannot well be argued as a 
matter of theory, and it certainly has not been found to be 
the fact, that a tenth of the produce of the land formed too 
ample a revenue for those whose devotion to the highest 
interests of their fellow-creatures had led them to forsake 
more lucrative professions. Ethelwolf, after his return from 
Eome, summoned the states of the whole kingdom, and with 
the consent of this assembly conferred on the Church of 
England a perpetual donation of the tithes of the land; 
but so completely did the weakness of his intellect prevent 
him from doing even a reasonable thing in a reasonable 
manner, and so infectious is superstition among an ignorant 
people, however resolute and high-spirited in other respects, 
that the revenues thus bestowed upon the Church were ex¬ 
empted from bearing any share in the burdens imposed on 
every other body for the defence of the kingdom from the 
national enemy, though the principal object of their enmity 
was that very Church thus excused from contributing to its 
own defence. 

Athelstan died before his father, who then shared his 
kingdom with Etbelbald, his second son ; and, dying soon 
after, left it to Etbelbald and his brother Ethelbert, who, 
after a short reign, were succeeded by their fourth brother, 
Ethelred. But this rapid succession of sovereigns in some 
degree deprived the nation of that uniform and steady energy 
requisite to make head against their untiring enemies; and, 





8 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

during these years, the Danes continually increased their 
hold upon the kingdom, bringing over constant reinforce¬ 
ments and overrunning the eastern and northern districts, 
while some tribes stood aloof from the contest, and others 
even formed alliances with them. Ethelred died of a wound 
a.d. received in battle, and was succeeded by his younger brother, 
8 71. Alfred, whose character, and achievements as a warrior and a 
lawgiver, and as the first monarch who made the civilization 
and education of his subjects especial objects of his care, 
deserve a more particular and honourable mention. 

In conformity with other writers I have called Alfred a 
lawgiver, though it is probable that the labours which have 
earned that title for him were generally directed rather to 
the restoration of ancient usages, and the reduction of ad¬ 
mitted rules into a methodical system, than to the enact- 
ment of many entirely new regulations. And in thinking of 
the laws of the kingdom in the early ages of English history, 
we must bear in mind two fundamental differences between 
those times and our own. In the first place, the early kings 
of England did not rule over a nation of freemen. A very 
great portion of the people were slaves or thralls: and 
though under the Norman dynasty the name was changed, 
the institution remained ; nor was there in fact any material 
amelioration of the condition of this unhappy body till the 
system of villanage died out, which it had not done entirely 
till near the end of the fifteenth century. In the second 
place, there was no parliament. The Saxon kings were far 
from absolute sovereigns, and were assisted by a council 
called the AVitenagemote, with w r hose advice, on all impor¬ 
tant measures of government, they could not dispense. But 
this was purely an aristocratic body, composed of the thanes, 
or great landowners, the earls or rulers of counties, and the 
bishops, and presided over by the king; to which the ceorls, 
or commons, sent no representatives, nor were they con¬ 
sidered as having a right to the slightest voice in the go¬ 
vernment. In the earlier stages of society, the power of the 
judge is more important than that of the lawgiver, the 
former being in fact often the origin of the latter 3 ; and the 
judicial authority among the Anglo-Saxons was vested 
mainly in the nobles, each of whom was judge in his own 
district: and the punishment for crime, which was more 

3 So we read in Herodotus, that the authority of Deioces originated in his 
being the arbiter of disputes among his neighbours. 


ALFRED. 


9 


IT.] 

than usually common, was in all cases a pecuniary penalty. 
Even murder was only punishable by a fine ; and the life of 
every man was valued, in a regular scale, according to his 
rank ; the very sovereign himself having no higher protec¬ 
tion than the greatness of the fine to be exacted for his 
murder: while so ample was the shield that the Church in 
those days held before her servants, that an archbishop’s life 
was rated more highly than the king’s. It is easy- to see 
that such a principle of punishment must have increased 
both the frequency and atrocity of crimes. 


CHAPTER II. 

No monarch ever came to a throne more surrounded with 
difficulties than Alfred, and no one ever more completely 
surmounted them by his own valour, wisdom, and conduct. 
Yet not only was the beginning of his reign unprosper- 
ous, but its disasters were, in a great degree, the result 
of his own errors. It is commonly unfavourable to the 
immediate reputation of any person to be in advance of 
his age ; and this drawback was aggravated in Alfred’s case 
by his being aware of his own superiority himself, and by 
his showing too plainly that he was aware of it. Being 
imbued with an innate thirst for knowledge, he had, even as 
a boy, acquired an amount of learning to which few men, in 
those ages of darkness and ignorance, could make any pre¬ 
tension. He had not only read the works of the Saxon poets 
and chroniclers, but he had made himself acquainted also 
with Latin and Greek, and had enriched his mind with those 
treasures of ancient genius and wisdom of which the study 
will never be unprofitable, the fascination will never be extinct. 
Young as he was (he was but twenty-two years of age when 
he ascended the throne of Wessex), he had visited Rome; 
and, on his travels through the countries on his road, he had 
gathered also much of that practical wisdom which is derived, 
by an intelligent mind, from seeing the institutions and ob¬ 
serving the characters of different nations. But wdiile his 
observations had inspired him with a desire for reforming 
the defective institutions, for dispelling the ignorance, and 



10 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

improving the manners, of his subjects, unfortunately they 
also taught him a contempt for them in their present state, 
the open display of which did not render them more inclined 
to submit to innovations, of which they did not see the 
necessity, nor could they appreciate the advantage. Pull of 
youthful ardour, confident in the rectitude of his intentions, 
and convinced of the benefit to be derived from his proposed 
measures, he tried to carry them with a high hand. He 
disdained to conciliate the acquiescence which he thought it 
sufficient to deserve, and by his peremptory manner gave 
rise to the unfounded suspicion that he was thinking more 
of creating an absolute power for himself, than of con¬ 
tributing to the happiness of those on whose prejudices he 
was trampling, and whose cherished habits he was almost 
openly insulting. 

The injustice of the judges, the oppression of the nobles, 
he sought to check by making unusual examples, and putting 
to death, by his own sentence, some of the most conspicuous 
delinquents. But at the same time he showed that it was 
not for the sake of the lower classes, who were oppressed by 
them, that he was thus severe ; those he had seen in his 
foreign travels treated with much greater contempt than 
was usual in England, and that feeling he had himself im¬ 
bibed for them. Thus he alienated those who were powerful 
enough to be oppressors, without attaching to himself the 
more numerous class of the oppressed, and he was destined 
in a short time to feel his unpopularity. From the very 
beginning of his reign he had been constrained to keep up a 
warfare against the Hanes. His military skill, which was 
considerable for the times, usually secured him the victor}^ 
though his impetuosity in seeking to follow up his successes 
sometimes deprived him of the fruits of it. But at last his 
subjects grew weary of fighting for a prince who neither 
loved them nor was loved by them; and when in 879 a fresh 
body of enemies landed, and advanced into the heart of the 
kingdom, and sacked Chippenham in AViltshire, they deserted 
his standard. Many even quitted the kingdom, and fled to 
France or Ireland for refuge, till Alfred was left destitute of 
followers, and was compelled to seek his own safety in flight 
and disguise. For a time he found shelter in the house of a 
small Somersetshire farmer, who, ignorant of his rank, em¬ 
ployed him in tending his cows ; and tradition, which often 
seems to take a poetical kind of pleasure in preserving 


ALFRED. 


11 


II.] 

anecdotes which mark the vicissitudes of fortune, records 
that on one occasion the farmer’s wife, having trusted him 
to watch the baking of some cakes on the hearth, scolded 
him severely when she found them all burnt, the king’s 
mind having been diverted from the attention requisite for 
the useful task imposed upon him by still weightier con¬ 
siderations about the recovery of his kingdom. When hap¬ 
pier times came, the change in the king’s fortunes brought 
with it a corresponding improvement in the condition of his 
humble protector. Alfred had him carefully educated, and, 
finding him a man of honesty and ability, procured him 
ordination, and made him bishop of Winchester. 

After a few months Alfred changed his abode, collected a 
few friends round him, and, in the marshy district above 
Taunton, still known as Athelney 4 , from the name that he 
then gave it, he built himself and his followers some rude 
huts, from which he made frequent sallies on the Danes, 
who knew neither the quarter from wffiich, nor the enemy 
from whose hand the blows came. After a time he w T as 
encouraged to more continued and open exertions by a great 
victory gained, near Barnstaple, by Oddun, earl of Devon¬ 
shire, over a large body of Danes commanded by Ubba, one 
of their most celebrated leaders, in which Ubba himself and 
nearly all his troops were slain, and their enchanted 
standard, “ the Kaven,” taken. He had been in conceal¬ 
ment only a few months, but those few had been sufficient 
to make his countrymen feel that the pride and arrogance of 
which they complained in him were more tolerable than the 
lawless cruelty of the Danes; while confidence in his valour 
and military skill was increased among those who had been 
the sharers of his recent exploits. 

As soon, therefore, as he judged events ripe for his re¬ 
appearance, he found no difficulty in collecting a formidable 
army. Having resolved on action, he was not content to 
rely solely on the secrecy and celerity of his movements for 
success, but ventured on an act full of personal danger, 
though facilitated by the slight difference that existed 
between the Saxon and Danish dialects. He disguised him¬ 
self as a harper, and entered the enemy’s camp as a spy, 
obtained admission into the tent of Guthrum, the king, and 
had full leisure to remark the negligence of their arrange- 


4 He called it ^thelingay, the isle of nobles. 


12 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

ments, their disregard of all precautions against surprise, 
and, in short, the supine security in which their whole army 
w r as sunk. Having thus obtained all the information he 
desired, he marched against them so suddenly, that the first 
intimation that they received of the existence of his array 
was derived from seeing it preparing to assail them. The 
unexpectedness of the attack, the very contempt which they 
had cherished for the foes whom they had so long oppressed, 
now contributed to dishearten them, and to incapacitate 
them from making a vigorous resistance. They were de¬ 
feated with great slaughter. The exact field of battle is 
unknown ; but, if we may trust those antiquaries who pro¬ 
nounce that the figures of white horses (a white horse was 
the device on the Saxon banner), cut in more than one place 
on the Wiltshire and Berkshire downs, were traced in those 
ages as monuments of Alfred’s victories, it must have been 
near Westbury, on the borders of Salisbury Plain. The 
defeated Danes fled to a fortress they possessed in the 
neighbourhood: but Alfred gave them no time to recover 
from their consternation, pursued them, and in a fortnight 
compelled them to capitulate. Gruthrum himself consented 
to embrace Christianity, and to exchange his barbarian name 
for the Saxon appellation of Athelstan; and Alfred placed 
him and his people as settlers in the north-eastern districts 
of the kingdom, which had been nearly depopulated by the 
ravages of their countrymen in past years. 

This single victory was so decisive that it restored peace 
throughout the whole island, and left Alfred at leisure to 
proceed with his plans for the improvement of his kingdom. 
His recent great deeds had effaced his previous unpopularity, 
and the reverses which had preceded them had taught him 
moderation and wisdom. He now recognized the great 
principle, that the happiness of the people, who in his reign 
began to be known by the name that they have since made 
so famous, of the English, was his most legitimate object, 
and he sought to secure it by making it depend on an uniform 
system of laws, rather than on the arbitrary will of any 
prince, however generally well-intentioned and discerning. 
The division of the kingdom into counties was not unknown 
in earlier times, but the troubles of many years had caused 
it to be but little attended to. Alfred now re-established it 
as a part of the regular system of government; and further 
subdivided the counties into hundreds and tythings, thus 


ALFRED. 


13 


II.] 

providing for the more easy enforcement of his laws, and 
the more uniform administration of justice throughout the 
land. So vigilant and efficacious was the system of police 
that he introduced, that it is said that he caused golden 
bracelets to be hung up by the side of the public roads, and 
that no thief was found hardy enough to venture to lay 
hands on them. To guide the magistrates in their decisions 
he collected the laws into a brief code, which, though now 
lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and 
is looked upon by many as the source of what is still called 
the common law. He laid the foundation of the system of 
trial by jury, severely punished every instance of corruption 
or partiality detected in the judges, and gave a further ex¬ 
ample of his regard for justice by often sitting as judge 
himself, and devoting the most patient attention to the in¬ 
vestigation of apparently unimportant causes. 

Eeeling too, as the old Homan poet had sung (though it 
is hardly probable that he had learnt it from his pages), 
that laws without manners are but of little avail, he applied 
himself to the removal of the ignorance that almost uni¬ 
versally overspread the land to such a degree that, accord¬ 
ing to his own statement, there was at the time of his ac¬ 
cession not one priest south of the Thames who could 
understand the prayers which he daily repeated, or translate 
any Latin document. Skilful himself in almost every branch 
of learning then known, he encouraged all classes in the 
pursuit of knowledge; he made some degree of education in¬ 
dispensable in all who sought any public office, erected 
schools at Oxford, and urged his subjects of every rank to 
send their children to them, so that he has often been called 
the founder of that noble university. His desire to omit 
no means of adding to the education and civilization of his 
people led him to keep up a constant correspondence with 
foreign countries, sending many embassies to Home, where 
his influence was so great that he procured an exemption 
from the ordinary imposts for the Saxon schools of that 
city. He even sent the bishop of Sherborne on a mission 
to India, to the shrine of St. Thomas, who was believed to 
have been buried there, and his ambassador brought back 
many curious productions of that country, while the send¬ 
ing forth of such an expedition greatly increased Alfred’s 
fame among foreign nations. 

But he was not lulled by the peace to which he had com- 


14 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

peiled Grithrum into a false security, or into a forgetful¬ 
ness of the necessity for providing against future attacks; 
and his penetration taught him that the most effectual 
means of defence against foreign enemies was to be found 
in a naval armament. Accordingly he applied himself to 
the establishment of such a force with a zeal that entitles 
him to be considered the founder of the English navy. In 
a few years he built a fleet of 120 vessels, manned with 
well-trained seamen, and distributed along the most exposed 
parts of the coast; and at the same time he improved the 
inland defences of the kingdom, rebuilt the castles and cities 
that had beeu destroyed, constructed new fortifications, and 
so regulated the military service of the country, as to render 
it easier for the future both to levy armies with rapidity 
and to keep them in state of efficiency as long as the occasion 
required. 

a.d. He lived long enough to reap himself the advantage 
of these wise measures. Immediately after the defeat of 
G-uthrum, Hasting, the most formidable leader that the 
Danes had ever had, entered the Thames and occupied 
Fulham; but, finding himself unsupported by his country¬ 
men, and dispirited by their recent defeat, he crossed over 
to France, ravaged all the northern coast of that country, 
extorted favourable terms from Charles the Simple, and 
carried his victorious arms even into Italy. 

895 . Fifteen years afterwards, with increased power and re¬ 
putation, he returned to the invasion of England, landed 
in Kent, and began to pillage the southern districts of 
the kingdom. It would be tedious, and at the present 
day wholly unprofitable, to trace in its details the long 
warfare that ensued. Hasting’s reputation as a mili¬ 
tary leader was the first in Europe at the time, but he 
found himself unequal to cope with the happy mixture of 
foresight, caution, and boldness which guided the operations 
of Alfred. Though afflicted with a painful complaint, which 
scarcely ever left him from the time of his arriving at man¬ 
hood till his death, the English king hastened to oppose the 
invader, sometimes drove him from post to post without giving 
him any opportunity of fighting on equal terms, surprising 
his detachments, and cutting off his supplies ; sometimes he 
ventured on a pitched battle, under circumstances so judi¬ 
ciously chosen that he was always victorious: twice he took 
the wife and children of Hasting prisoners; but each time 


I 


ALFRED. 


15 


ii.] 

with a generous magnanimity unprecedented in that fierce 
age, he declared that he warred not with women and children, 
loaded them with presents, and sent them back in freedom 
and honour to his enemy. More than once did the baffled 
Dane traverse the kingdom from east to west, at one time 
threatening Exeter, at another penetrating to the Severn 
and seizing strongholds on the borders of the Welsh terri¬ 
tory. His pursuer was as swift in his motions as himself; 
at last, after three years of incessant warfare, Hasting 
quitted the island, and returned to Erance, to console him¬ 
self for his disappointment in England with the pillage of 
that rich and, under a feeble king, unwarlike territory. 

The short remnant of Alfred’s life was occupied in reme¬ 
dying, as far as possible, the evils which this long campaign 
had inflicted upon the kingdom. The obstacles which it 
had interposed to the cultivation of the land had caused a 
famine; the famine brought on a most alarming and general 
pestilence. But his power, now consolidated over all the 
southern part of the island, and fortified by a firm alliance 
with the Welsh, enabled him to triumph over even these 
misfortunes. By judicious grants he relieved local and 
temporary distress; by fresh wise regulations he guarded, 

N as far as was possible, against the recurrence of such evils 
in future. But he was not permitted himself ‘to enjoy for 
any length of time the peace which he had won for his 
people; the complaint under which he had long laboured, 
and w'hich the scanty medical skill of that age was unable to 
relieve, or even to discover, terminated his life after a 
glorious reign of thirty years, and he died leaving behind 
him a reputation not only superior to that of all preceding 
European monarchs, but even at this day second to that 
of no sovereign who has ever governed a nation, whether 
we regard the greatness of his difficulties and the success 
with which he surmounted them, the beneficial character of 
his reforms, or the permanent effect which they produced 
on the happiness and character of his people. 


A.D 

901 


16 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER III. 

/ t i 

a.d. Alfred’s title to the throne would not have been con- 
sidered valid at the present day, as his elder brother Ethel- 
bert had left infant children; but it was so impossible for a 
child to govern or defend the kingdom at such a crisis, that 
his nephews were never mentioned when he was elected to 
the throne. At his death, however, the eldest of them, 
named Ethelwald, disputed the succession with his son 
Edward the Elder, or first sovereign of that name; but he 
was killed in battle, and Edward remained in undisturbed 

924. possession of the throne. He and his son Athelstan, 
who succeeded him, were able and warlike princes ; Athel¬ 
stan especially, who united to his kingdom the last divi¬ 
sions of the Heptarchy which still remained independent 
and separate governments. Athelstan had endeavoured 
to gain over Sigrig, king of Northumberland, by giving 
him his sister in marriage on his becoming a Christian; 
but after a short time he renounced both his wife and his 
new religion, and soon after died before he could feel the 
effects of Athelstan’s resentment. Athelstan overran his 
kingdom and added it to his own dominions; but Sigrig’s 
son, Anlaf, was not disposed to submit to the loss of his 
inheritance, and crossed over from Ireland, where he pos¬ 
sessed the sovereignty of a small district, to recover his 
British throne. The Welsh and Scotch, who had already 
been reduced to the condition of tributary nations by Athel¬ 
stan, and who bore the unaccustomed yoke with great im¬ 
patience, gladly joined him, and he procured large rein¬ 
forcements from Norway and Denmark; Athelstan, too, 
strengthened himself by various alliances, especially by one 
with Rollo, prince of Normandy, to meet the coming storm. 
The armies met; the position and even the name of the field 
of battle are alike uncertain, but not the event. Anlaf, 
wishing to surprise Athelstan by a night attack, ventured 
on the same step which Alfred had taken with such success, 
penetrating in the disguise of a harper into the hostile 
camp, and even into the royal tent; but as he disdained to 
keep the present with which the English monarch had re- 


ATHELSTAN. 


17 


III.] 

warded his minstrelsy, he buried it in the sand on leaving 
the camp, and this action, being seen by an English soldier, 
betrayed the real character of .the disguised musician, and 
enabled Athelstan to baffle his attempt. The night attack 
failed, but the battle by day continued for many years a 
favourite theme of national minstrels; none had ever been 
more stubbornly contested, none had ever been terminated 
by a more decisive victory. Anlaf himself fled, but he left 
no less than five kings, his allies, dead upon the field. 
Athelstan was now master of the whole island ; but Scot¬ 
land and Wales he restored to their former sovereigns, 
declaring that he would rather bestow kingdoms than enjoy 
them, being contented himself with the glory of being the 
first monarch who ever exerted actual kingly power over all 
the divisions of the Heptarchy. 

The glory of his victory is not to be measured merely by 
the acquisition of territory which it secured: it raised his 
renown to a pitch higher even than that of Alfred among 
foreign nations; his protection was implored by princes in 
distress, his alliance was courted by those enjoying the 
greatest prosperity ; the ruler of Brittany, when expelled by 
the Normans, found a refuge at his court; Henry the 
Eowler, the great emperor of Germany, begged his sister in 
marriage for his son Otho, while so great was his influence 
over the French nobles, that it was chiefly through his in¬ 
terposition that they conferred the crown of their kingdom 
on his nephew Louis, who, on the dethronement of his 
father, Charles the Simple, had, while only in his third year, 
been brought to England by his mother, and carefully edu¬ 
cated by Edward the Elder and Athelstan; and when Louis 
was seated on the throne, as he was for some time disquieted 
by hostilities threatened from abroad, and by a seditious 
spirit constantly displaying itself at home, Athelstan engaged 
to send a fleet to his support, thus making with him the 
first military alliance ever contracted by England with a 
foreign power. 

Harold Harfagre, king of Norway, was one of the wisest 
princes of his day; he too sent his eldest son Haco to be 
educated in England, and the Norwegians traced much of 
the happiness they enjoyed under his firm and equitable 
rule to the wise precepts, and still more beneficial example, 
of the great king of England. Alfred had raised a navy 
for the defence of the kingdom, and Athelstan sought to 

c 


18 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

direct the rising maritime spirit of the people into the 
channel to which it has since owed a great portion of its 
power and opulence ; encouraging commerce by a regulation, 
that any merchant who had made three sea-voyages on his 
own account should be admitted to the rank of a thane; a 

A -t>. title previously confined to the greatest landowners and 

041. men 0 p no p] es t; bi r th in the kingdom. His death, after a 
glorious reign of seventeen years, was nearly fatal to the 
power which he had consolidated; for Anlaf renewed his 
invasion of England with such success, that after one or 
two bloody battles Edmund, who had succeeded to the 
throne, was forced to consent to divide the kingdom with 
him, and to agree to the condition that the survivor should 
be sovereign of the whole. But Anlaf died the next year, 
and Edmund, then relieved from all fear of foreign enemies, 
completed the expulsion of the Danes, whom Athelstan had 
left in the possession of a few towns in the centre of the 
kingdom. 

946. After a short reign, Edmund was murdered by a bandit 
named Leof; and his brother Edred completed the con¬ 
solidation of England into one monarchy by the defeat and 
slaughter of Eric, to whom Athelstan had given Northum¬ 
berland, and who provoked his indignation by using that 
kingdom only as a stronghold in which to maintain a 
band of pirates, with whom he scoured the ocean, and 
pillaged all the dwellers on the neighbouring coasts. Having 
always had a sickly constitution, Edred died at an early 
age; and was succeeded by his nephew Edwy, a son of the 
former king Edmund, whose reign is remarkable as the first 
in which ecclesiastics in England began to exert political 
power, and to claim for the Church a right of interfering in 
the temporal concerns of princes and nations. Odo, whose 
father had been a Danish pirate, and who had distinguished 
himself as a gallant soldier in the great battle in which 
Athelstan drove Anlaf from his throne, had become a Bene¬ 
dictine monk, and had gradually risen to be archbishop of 
Canterbury; in his new dignity he desired to reform the 
clergy of the kingdom, whose ignorance and immorality 
afforded ample room for improvement. His coadjutor, who 
soon took the lead, which commanding talents, seconded by 
the most unscrupulous fanaticism, easily gave him, was 
Dunstan, whose abilities and accomplishments had procured 
him an introduction to king Edmund, had obtained him the 


EDWY. 


19 


III.] 

abbacy of Glastonbury, and made birn the confidential 
adviser of Edred. His skill in nearly every branch of learn¬ 
ing then known was so great, that it was attributed by his 
enemies to sorcery; and he did not disdain to increase his 
influence over the multitude by the most monstrous impos¬ 
tures. Aiming at a character for asceticism, which in those 
days was thought to invest its professor with a peculiar 
sanctity, he excavated for himself a cell under ground 
scarcely bigger than a grave, where he devoted himself to 
study; and, among other arts, to that of working in metals. 

One night the neighbourhood was disturbed with strange 
bowlings, and Dunstan acquired the reputation of a saint 
by declaring that as he was at work the devil had come to 
his cell, that he had seized Satan by the nose with his red- 
hot pincers, and that the bowlings which had been heard, 
were those extorted from him by the pain thus inflicted by 
the undaunted saint. At one time he announced to the 
king that St. Peter had appeared to him in a vision, had 
beaten him for refusing the bishopric of Winchester, and 
had promised him the primacy; at another he declared, that 
angels from heaven had communicated to him the death of 
Edred while he was at a distance from him. When, by 
these fables, he had created a general belief in his holiness, 
and in the favour with which he was regarded by the Deity, 
he proceeded to grasp power by more violent means. King 
Edwy had married his cousin Elgiva, and on the day of his 
coronation had retired early from the banquet to enjoy her 
society; Odo sent Dunstan to bring him back, who forced 
his way into the king’s presence, reviled him and the queen, 
and dragged him by force back to the banqueting hall; 
and when Edwy, in just indignation, deprived Dunstan of 
his preferment and banished him, Odo proceeded to declare 
his marriage void on account of the relationship existing 
between him and the queen; and as he refused to submit to 
this sentence, the archbishop seized Elgiva, burnt her face 
with hot irons in the hope of destroying her beauty, and 
banished her to Ireland. Unhappily for herself her wounds 
healed, and she returned with undiminished charms to re¬ 
sume her empire over her husband’s heart; he seized her a 
second time, hamstrung her, and, when she had died of 
her sufferings, raised a rebellion against her husband, set 
up his younger brother Edgar, a boy of thirteen, as his a.d. 
rival, and deprived him of all the northern part of the 959. 

c 2 




20 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

kingdom. Odo died; and Dunstan, who had returned 
to England, and had succeeded him as archbishop, for a 
while governed those districts in Edgar’s name; and when, 
on Edwy’s death, Edgar became the sole sovereign, Dunstan 
was in effect the ruler of the whole realm. His chief object 
appeared to be the suppression, or at least the depression, 
of the existing clergy, and the aggrandizement of the order 
to which he himself belonged in their stead; and to such a 
degree had he inspired his royal pupil with his own feelings, 
that Edgar, when he came of age, boasted that he had 
already founded forty-seven monasteries, and hoped soon to 
complete the number to fifty. 

When Edgar became of an age to think and act for him¬ 
self, his chief anxiety was to gratify his passions and his 
pride, and Dunstan connived at all his excesses, thinking 
them more than atoned for by his co-operation with himself 
in his own designs; though his passions impelled him to 
murder his friend in order to seduce his wife, and to violate 
the sanctity of a convent in order to possess himself by force of 
a nun whom he admired; and his pride led him to compel 
eight kings, who came to Chester to do him homage, to take 
the place of his servants, and to row him and his nobles in 
a gilded vessel clown the Dee. 

He was very successful as a warrior, clearing the adjacent 
islands of pirates, invading, and according to his own ac¬ 
count, subduing Dublin, and the greater part of Ireland and 
Wales, where, as that country was greatly infested by wolves, 
which bred among its mountains and descended from them 
to the more cultivated parts of the island, he changed the 
tribute imposed upon it by Athelstan into an annual offer¬ 
ing of three hundred wolves’ heads, a regulation which soon 
led to their total extirpation. More beneficial still were his 
measures for the reformation of the coinage, the art of clip¬ 
ping which (so often the cause of distress and complaint in 
subsequent times) had already begun to be practised ; for 
the protection of the laws, which he himself upheld, by mak¬ 
ing constant journeys through the kingdom to inquire into 
abuses; and for the encouragement both of internal trade 
and of foreign commerce, which had previously been eagerly 
promoted by Athelstan, and now derived fresh vigour 
from Edgar’s judicious treatment of Saxon and Flemish 
A , D . merchants. On Edgar’s death, Edward, his eldest son, from 
975. his tragical end, known in English history as Edward 


III.] EDWARD THE MARTYR, 21 

the Martyr, was his natural successor, but the fact of 
Dunstan espousing his cause stimulated those who wished to 
strengthen the secular clergy in opposition to the increasing 
power and number of the monks, to set up a competitor 
to the throne in the person of his younger half-brother, 
Ethelred, whose mother Elfrida, an intriguing unscrupulous 
woman, had availed herself of the religious dissensions 
(proverbially the bitterest of all causes of hatred) which 
distracted the land, to raise a strong party in his behalf. 
Great tumults ensued, which Dunstan hoped to terminate 
by crowning Edward at Kingston; but this step, which did, 
in effect, put an end to the disputes about the succession, 
only increased the disorder which prevailed throughout the 
kingdom, as Dunstan’s success encouraged him to greater 
violence against the clergy who did not belong to his 
favourite order, and against their supporters. To counte¬ 
nance his own proceedings, and to daunt his opponents, he 
again had recourse to those impostures which the Church of 
Dome has at all times been too willing to practise or to 
sanction. On one occasion he contrived that a crucifix 
should pronounce a decisive sentence in his favour. On 
another, having convened a council of nobles in an upper 
room at Caine, from which he kept the king away, he de¬ 
clared that “ he committed the cause of the Church to the 
decision of Christ,” and instantly the whole floor, except that 
portion of it on which his own chair was placed, sank be¬ 
neath the assembled councillors, many of whom were killed 
on the spot, and others were severely injured. Dunstan 
appealed to the event as a miraculous interposition of the 
Deity in favour of true religion, but every one else re¬ 
garded it as a contrivance of his own, which only proved 
that no crime could be too great for him to commit, if it 
seemed likely to further his objects. 

This atrocity, however, only stimulated his adversaries to 
the commission of similar crimes, and as the king was now 
on the point of coming of age, and seemed wholly devoted to 
the archbishop, it was determined to murder him; and in a 
casual hunting visit which he paid to Elfrida, at Corfe 
Castle, he was stabbed while in the act of drinking a cup 
of wine, which she herself brought him, and was succeeded 
bv Ethelred, a child of ten years old, whose reign was 
longer than that of any of his predecessors, but full of dis¬ 
grace to himself, and calamity to his people. 


A.D. 

978. 


22 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

His accession, however, failed to benefit the party that had 
brought it about as much as they had expected. Many 
even of those who hated Dunstan, recoiled from the idea of 
allowing power to remain in the hands of a woman like 
Elfrida, who could contrive the murder of her stepson at her 
own door. Dunstan availed himself of the disgust that her 
crime had excited, which, as being more recent, had ap¬ 
parently effaced the recollection of his own, to drive her 
into a cloister, and to obtain the same supreme direction 
of affairs under Ethelred, that he had enjoyed under 
Edward. 

But the distracted state of the kingdom, produced by his 
factious elevation' of the monks at the expense of the other 
clergy, invited the Danes to renew their invasions. The 
very next year they descended on the southern coast, 
ravaged Devonshire and Dorsetshire, and, after a few years, 
their attacks became periodical, and so formidable that 
Ethelred, whose timid disposition had procured him the 
nickname of “ the Unready,” adopted the weak and shameful 
advice of Siric, the successor of Dunstan, and bribed the 
Danes with a large sum of money to return to their own 
land. Such pusillanimity could have no other effect than 
that of tempting the invaders to repeat an aggression that 
proved so profitable. They returned a second time ; a large 
fleet was collected to oppose them, and was placed under 
the command of Alfric, duke of Mercia, who betrayed it to 
the enemy; though so miserably weak was the government, 
that his treason did not prevent his being again intrusted 
with the command. The sixteenth year of Ethelred’s reign 
brought a more formidable invasion than had yet been 
experienced. Olave, son of the king of Norway, and 
Sweyn, king of Denmark, sailed up the Thames with ninety- 
four ships, and, though their attempt on London was frus¬ 
trated by the valour of the citizens, ravaged the southern 
part of the kingdom, till the cowardly monarch again bought 
them oft’ by the payment of a larger sum than before. The 
princes received 16,000/. as the price of their retreat; 
Olave also submitted to be baptized as a Christian, and 
when, having quarrelled with Sweyn,. he was defeated and 
killed by him in battle, he was canonized as St. Olave by 
the Church of Eome. He had considered himself bound 
never to renew his invasion ; but the less scrupulous Sweyn 
returned again in a short time, and exacted a fresh payment 


ETHELRED. 



23 


of 24,OOOZ.; his attempts being invariably seconded by the 
treasonable co-operation of some of the English nobles. 

To bribe invaders to retreat was base and foolish enough ; 
but the measure to which Ethelred presently had recourse, 
to strike terror into those whom he found that his previous 
conduct had only allured, was still more base and still more 
foolish. The abolition of the Danish power in England 
under the vigorous rule of Alfred and Athelstan had not 
only not been accompanied by the expulsion of those of that 
country who were willing to remain as peaceful inhabitants 
and loyal subjects, but Athelstan and Edgar had kept a con¬ 
siderable body of Danes in their pay as soldiers: it was 
not unnatural that these men should sympathize with their 
countrymen when endeavouring to recover their footing in 
the island ; that they should fight against them unwillingly, 
and occasionally desert to them, and betray their English 
masters. Some of Ethelred’s advisers now suggested to 
him the idea of exterminating them, and the wretched 
prince issued the order for a deed which, though imitated 
and even surpassed in atrocity in subsequent ages by the 
Sicilian Vespers, and the still more notorious massacre of 
St.Bartholomew, stamps his name with indelible infamy, show¬ 
ing that no degree of natural ferocity can make a man as 
cruel as cowardice, and that no vice is so fatal in a ruler as 
weakness. On St. Bride’s Day, Nov. 14, 1002, every one 
of Danish blood in England was assassinated in cold blood. 
The very altars and churches were no protection to those 
who fled to them as a sanctuary and asylum; even Grun- 
hilda, the sister of Sweyn, who had married an English 
noble, found that the connexion with her involved her hus¬ 
band and child in the same destruction, and was murdered 
by Ethelred’s emissaries, after seeing them both butchered 
before her eyes. 

This unprecedented crime was not only useless, but per¬ 
nicious. The news soon reached Denmark, and gave Sweyn 
a fair pretext to renew his attacks on England as the 
avenger of the blood of his murdered countrymen. Again 
the command of the English army was intrusted to Alfric, 
again he betrayed it; and after his death he was succeeded 
by Edric, Ethelred’s son-in-law, who proved a worse traitor 
still. It was in vain that a large fleet was collected to 
oppose the invaders; the treachery of its leader frustrated 
every project of defence. Time after time did the wretched 



24 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Ethelred endeavour to buy off his enemies with increasing 
sums of money, till at last, as Emma his queen was a sister 
of ltichard, duke of Normandy, he fled with her and his 
children to his brother-in-law’s court, and the English nobles 
swore allegiance to Sweyn as king, and gave him hostages 
for their fidelity. 

Sweyn soon died, and the chief men of the nation invited 
Ethelred to return and resume the government, on condi¬ 
tion of ruling with greater equity and moderation for the 
future. Ethelred, however, was incapable of learning wis¬ 
dom or humanity even from the stern teaching of adversity. 
Courage w r as still more alien to his nature; and he had more 
need than ever both of wisdom and of courage, for Sweyn’s 
son, Canute, was deficient in no quality requisite to make 
his pretensions formidable, though his valour was as yet 
sullied by barbarian ferocity, w r hich he laid aside when age 
had taught him reflection, and success (which never pro¬ 
duces such effects save in magnanimous natures) had 
softened his disposition. In the first paroxysms of anger at 
what he considered the revolt of the English, he cruelly 
mutilated the hostages who had been delivered to his father, 
landed them on the Kentish coast, and invaded the 
*-i). kingdom with a numerous army. Edric joined him with 
a large portion of the English fleet. Ethelred died in 
1013, and Edmund, his natural son, wdio succeeded him, 
and whose valour earned him the appellation of Iron¬ 
side, found his efforts for the defence of the land paralyzed 
by the treachery of some, and the pusillanimity of others, 
among his subjects, till, though not always defeated, he was 
forced to consent to divide the kingdom with the Dane. 
But in the third year of his reign he was assassinated by 
Edric, and Canute enjoyed the undivided sovereignty of the 
island. 

1016. The opening of his reign held out but little prospect 
of tranquillity or happiness to the nation. The readiness 
with which the nobles had recalled Ethelred, after the 
death of Sw r eyn, had made him suspicious of every one, 
and to secure his own power he put to death many of 
the most eminent and powerful men in the kingdom, and 
especially those of royal blood. Ethelred had left legitimate 
sons younger than Edmund, the late king; those he mur¬ 
dered at once : but fearing the greater popularity of Edw r ard 
and Edmund, the sons of Ironside, he sent them to Sweden, 


CANUTE. 


25 


IV.] 

intending that they should be put to death there. But the 
king of Sweden suffered them to escape; and Edward, mar¬ 
rying the daughter of the emperor Henry, became the 
father of Edgar Atheling, who, after the conquest, was set 
up as a competitor for the throne, and was for many years 
the rock in which the Saxons trusted as their last hope of 
escape from the foreign tyranny of the Normans. 

Cruelty, however, was not natural to Canute, and was only 
practised by him in obedience to what he believed to be the 
stern necessity of his political situation; and as soon as he 
felt secure that he had removed all rivals, and crushed every 
thought of insurrection, his sway grew mild and beneficent. 
He levied, indeed, vast sums of money on the kingdom, the 
amount of which proved, even at that early period, its great 
comparative opulence. But he took many opportunities of 
showing his confidence in his English subjects, sending to 
their own country the greater portion of his Danish army; 
and when, nine years after his accession, the Swedes invaded 
Denmark, and he gained a victory, which was mainly attri¬ 
butable to the valour of his English soldiers, and the skill of 
earl Godwin, their leader, his gratitude led him not only to 
give his daughter in marriage to the general, but, from that 
time forth, to regard the whole nation with especial favour 
and affection. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Among- the many instances in which fortune and conduct 
have combined to raise to eminence and power persons 
whose birth seemed to exclude them from any such distinc¬ 
tion, there have been few more remarkable than that of 
Godwin, who, though the son of a peasant, and employed 
tjll the age of manhood as a neatherd, lived to become a 
general and a conqueror, the most powerful of the English 
nobles, the son-in-law of one king, and the father of another. 
After one of the battles which king Edmund had won from 
the Danes in his manly but vain efforts for the independence 
of his country, a Danish captain, high in the favour of Ca¬ 
nute, had been separated from his comrades, and, losing his 
way, had wandered all night in the woods of Warwickshire. 
In the morning he fell in with Godwin as he was driving his 



26 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

father’s oxen to the field, implored his aid, and offered him 
a valuable ring to induce him to guide him to the Danish 
army. The Danes were hated by the country people, and 
there was no hope of quarter for such an enemy if discovered, 
or of pardon for any person who sheltered or saved one. 
Godwin, however, though he rejected the bribe, promised 
out of compassion to conduct him to his countrymen, lodged 
him for the day in his father’s hut, and, when they set out 
at dusk on a journey which made it unsafe for the Saxon to 
return to his own people, the Dane promised him employ¬ 
ment in Canute’s service. They reached the camp in safety; 
and his gratitude was not contented with the bare per¬ 
formance of his promise. He treated his guide as his own son, 
in time procured him a command, and, as Godwin displayed 
great military and political talent, and as Canute was a 
prince well able to appreciate and inclined to reward excel¬ 
lence, he rapidly rose to be the governor of a province, and 
the most powerful noble in the whole kingdom. 

When Canute had established his authority over the whole 
of England, he sought to extend his dominions. He invaded 
Scotland, defeated king Malcolm, and conquered the greater 
part of that country. But the more his exploits raised him above 
other men, the more plainly did he perceive, and the more 
acutely did he feel the great fact, that there was a power supe¬ 
rior to his own, which he was not only powerless to control, but 
to which he was himself responsible ; and, in the latter part of 
his reign, he tried by his example to inculcate these ideas on 
his subjects. On one occasion, having killed a man in a fit 
of intemperance, he confessed his fault before the judges, and 
demanded that they should impose on him a penalty pro¬ 
portioned to his oflence. More wddely celebrated is his 
reproof of his flattering courtiers. They professed to believe 
that every thing was in the power of one who had performed 
such great deeds, and who ruled over such vast dominions. 
He caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore while the tic^ 
was rising, and in a loud voice commanded the ocean to stay 
his proud waves, and to approach no nearer to his sovereign. 
The sea, regardless of the mandate, rose till it washed the 
robes and feet of the king, who then pointed out to his fol¬ 
lowers that the power which even the winds and the sea 
obey was one mightier than his own; and from that time 
forth he w r ould never wear his crown. Nor did he confine 
his devotion to empty words or barren displays of humility. 


HARDICANUTE. 


27 


IV.] 

He rebuilt the churches which had been burnt by his coun¬ 
trymen ; lie founded convents ; he undertook a journey to 
Home, where he remained some time, during which he pro¬ 
cured from the pope many exemptions and privileges for his 
English subjects who travelled to or resided in that city. 

He had married Emma, the widow of Ethelred, stipulating 
with her brother Richard, duke of Normandy, that his chil¬ 
dren by her should succeed him on the English throne; but 
as Richard was dead he altered that arrangement, and, leav¬ 
ing Hardicanute, Emma’s son, the kingdom of Denmark, he 
bequeathed England to Harold, surnamed Harefoot, his 
son by a previous marriage. At his death, however, in 
1035, though the Danish inhabitants of the island were 
pleased with this disposition, the English were not in¬ 
clined to acquiesce in it. They looked on Hardicanute 
as their countryman; and a civil war between the two 
brothers was only prevented by a division of the kingdom. 
Hardicanute himself was absent at the time of his father’s 
death, and his cause had been maintained by his mother 
Emma and some of the nobles, of whom Godwin w T as the chief; 
but before he arrived in England to take possession of his part 
of the island, earl Godwin had been gained over by Harold. 
The defection of him to w r hom they had looked as their 
leader, only increased the resolution of the English not to 
submit to one whom they considered a foreigner; and Ethel- 
noth, the archbishop, refused to crown him. Harold, brutal 
rather than brave, conceived a hatred to the Church on 
account of this act of its chief minister, and took every 
opportunity to show his contempt for religion. 

His reign, which lasted only four years, is remarkable for 
nothing but the death of Alfred, one of the sons of Ethelred, 
all the circumstances of which are buried in obscurity, 
though the report of his having been betrayed by Godwin 
was so universal, that in the next reign he w r as formally 
accused of having been accessory to the prince’s murder, 
and only obtained his acquittal by the most costly presents. 
Hardicanute, who on his death succeeded to the peaceful 
possession of the whole kingdom, was detested for his cruelty 
and rapacity; and, dying after a short reign of two years, 
■was succeeded by Edward, the surviving son of Ethelred, 
who reconciled himself to Godwin, though he had formerly 
accused him of the murder of his brother, and married his 
daughter Edith. 


A.D. 

1035. 



A.D. 

1041 . 


28 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [(3H. 

Edward, to whom for his subservience to their dictates 
the monks, the only historians of that age, gave the name 
of the Confessor, was, for the greater part of his reign, a 
very fortunate sovereign. His accession was hailed with, 
gladness by the people, who were disgusted with the vices 
of the two last kings, and who saw in him the representative 
of their old English line of sovereigns ; but after a time the 
exclusive favour which he showed to the Normans, the con¬ 
sequence of his long residence at his uncle’s court, greatly 
diminished his popularity, and excited the jealousy of the 
nobles, and especially of earl Godwin. But Godwin’s dis¬ 
content might possibly have been confined to remonstrances, 
for, powerful as he was, he was not able by himself to 
compel Edward to a change of policy, and other earls, such 
as Leofric of Mercia, and Siward of Northumberland, but 
little inferior in authority to himself, were more jealous of him 
than of the foreigners, and were likely to side with the king, 
against him, when the insolence of a newly arrived Norman 
brought matters to a head. Eustace, count of Boulogne, 
who had married Edward’s sister, coming on a visit to his 
brother-in-law, marched into Dover at the head of a 
numerous retinue, fully armed, as if they were taking pos¬ 
session of a conquered town, selecting the best houses to 
lodge in, and compelling the owners to admit them by force 
of arms. Most of the citizens were terrified into submission, 
but one high-spirited man refused to acquiesce in such an 
insolent ejection from his own property; on which the 
Norman who had selected his house drew his sword and 
wounded him, and in the fray which ensued was killed by the 
Englishman. Eustace made this act of self-defence a plea for 
a general attack on the citizens; he and his men forced the 
Englishman’s house, slew him and his family, and then tra¬ 
versed the town sword in hand, cutting down and trampling 
under foot even women and children, till the citizens col¬ 
lected in sufficient numbers to defend themselves, when 
they slew several of the Normans, and drove the rest 
out of the town. Eustace laid his complaint before 
Edward, who, without further inquiry, ordered Godwin, in 
whose government Dover was situated, to take vengeance 
on the inhabitants; and when Godwin refused, and, laying 
all the blame on Eustace, demanded that he and his 
fo]lowers should be brought to trial, Edward impeached 
him before his council, and procured his banishment, and 


HAROLD. 


29 



that of all his family, carrying his resentment towards 
him to such an extent as even to put away the queen 
because she was his daughter, and to confine her in a 
convent. 

Godwin fled to Flanders, and the Norman influence be- a.d. 
came more predominant than ever at the English court. 1049 * 
Among others, William, the duke of Normandy, paid a 
visit to Edward, and was entertained with great mag¬ 
nificence. He had been a favourite of Edward’s from his 
boyhood, and, if his own assertion may be credited, had long 
before received from him a promise of being appointed his 
heir, if he himself should ever attain the throne of England. 

Godwin was not inclined to submit unresistingly to the 
banishment and ruin of his family, but collected a large fleet 
and returned to England, where he was joined by his eldest 
son Harold, who had raised a formidable force in Ireland ; 
and, as the disaffection of the English nobles, and their 
jealousy of the Normans increased every day, his party 
speedily became strong enough to compel the king to reverse 
the sentence passed against him, to restore him to his 
former rank, and to banish the Normans from the kingdom 
as enemies of the public peace; while Godwin, on his part, 
placed his youngest son and one of his grandsons in 
Edward’s hands as hostages for his future loyalty, and 
allowed them to be committed to the care of the duke 
of Normandy. Godwin died soon afterwards, and Edwin 1053. 
invested Harold with all his dignities, and on the death 
of Siward, as his son Waltheof was a minor, the govern¬ 
ment of Northumberland was given to Tosti, another of the 
sons of Godwin. 

Harold succeeded to all his father’s popularity among his 
countrymen, and added to it by his own conduct; he de¬ 
feated the Welsh, who, encouraged by the divisions in Eng¬ 
land, had harassed the frontier with repeated invasions, and 
by his moderation he pacified the Northumbrians, who had 
been provoked by Tosti’s oppressions to expel him, and to 
choose a grandson of Leofric for their governor. And, as he 
treated Edward with uniform respect and deference, he 
gained his favour also, so that the annalists of the time tell 
us that the king loved him as his own son. He was na¬ 
turally anxious for the restoration of his son and nephew, 
who had been given up as hostages to Edward, and, as has 
been already mentioned, had been sent to Normandy; and 


30 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

% 

Edward willingly consented to their return, but was greatly 
concerned to find that Harold designed himself to cross the 
sea to fetch them, warning him not to put himsell in the 
power of one whom he rightly described as crafty and un¬ 
scrupulous. His forebodings proved too true; William 
received Harold with great honour, sharing with him his 
tent and table ; invested him with the order of knighthood, 
which had but lately been introduced on the Continent, and 
was as yet unknown in England; but availed himself of his 
position to extort from him a promise to marry his daughter, 
to deliver to him the Castle of Hover, and to assist him in 
obtaining the crown of England, which he declared that 
Edward had promised to him; afterwards, in a general 
assembly of the barons of Normandy, he compelled him to 
confirm his promise by an oath; and when he had sworn 
religiously to observe it, he showed him that the Gfospel, on 
which he had laid his hand, was resting on a chest of bones 
and relics of saints and martyrs which William had col¬ 
lected for the purpose, and which, in that age of ignorant 
superstition, were believed to add a very great degree of 
sanctity to an oath, of which the saints were thus in a 
manner brought as witnesses. 

On his return to England Harold related what had passed 
to Edward, who was deeply grieved at the evils which he 
now perceived that his former attachment to foreigners was 
preparing for his kingdom. His health had for some time 
been failing, and anxiety and distress soon destroyed all 
a.d. hope of his recovery: on the 5th of January, 1066, he died, 
1066. in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his 
reign; leaving no children, but recommending Harold to 
his nobles as most worthy to be his successor. 

In those days even the eldest son of the previous sovereign 
was not considered as king till that rank had been bestowed 
on him by the election of the nobles : and there had been, 
and were afterwards occasions when the throne was actually 
vacant for some weeks; but now (since William’s pre¬ 
tensions to the throne were well known) the emergency 
was too pressing to admit of delay, and the very next day 
Harold was elected king, and anointed by Stigand, arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, who, in spite of the remonstrances of 
the pope, had been appointed to that dignity on the ex¬ 
pulsion of the Norman Eobert. It was not from one 
quarter only that he had to apprehend hostility; Tosti, to 


HAROLD. 


31 


IV.] 

whose expulsion from his Northumbrian government he had 
consented, hastened to William, whose wife’s sister he had 
married, to inflame him against his brother, and to offer his 
aid for the instant invasion of England; but William, who 
had resolved on his plans too fully to be precipitate, merely 
gave him a few vessels, with which he sailed to Norway to 
seek the aid of Harold Hardrada, king of that country, who 
was eager to seize any pretence for invading any territory 
more opulent than his own. 

Though he had refused to join Tosti, William had no m 
tention of abandoning his claim upon the English throne. 
As soon as the news of Harold’s coronation reached him, he 
sent an envoy to remind him of his oath, and to demand the 
surrender of the kingdom. Harold answered that the oath 
was invalid, as having been extorted by force, and that if it 
were not, he had neither the right nor the power to give 
away the sovereignty over a free country; and he replied 
to the demand, that he should fulfil his promise of taking 
William’s daughter for his wife, by marrying the sister of 
the earls Edwin and Morcar, the grandsons of Leofric, the 
deceased earl of Mercia. 

William prepared for war, and, not undervaluing the 
greatness of the enterprise which he meditated, sought for 
aid from aH quarters. The pope gladly declared Harold a 
perjurer, and William the rightful heir of Edward, sending 
him a ring containing a hair from the head of St. Peter, 
a standard which had received the apostolic benediction, and 
a bull formally declaring him king of England. But when 
William applied for aid to the king of France, offering to do 
him homage for England when he should have subdued it, 
he found that Philip was not inclined to promote the aggran¬ 
dizement of a vassal who was already too powerful; and 
Baldwin, count of Flanders, though his brother-in-law, 
feared him as a neighbour more than he loved him as a con¬ 
nexion, and also refused him assistance. The aid, however, 
which he could not procure from the princes, he obtained 
abundantly from their subjects. Many were willing to 
enlist in a cause sanctioned by the Church; more were 
attracted by the hopes of plunder which William held out 
to every one who should join him; and his promises w r ere 
as varied in their kind as they were liberal in magnitude. 
Some were ensured an estate; others, a castle or a town. 


A.D. 

lOfiG. 



32 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. On some lie engaged to bestow well-dowered English wives: 

10GG. -k 0 one powerful baron he promised an English bishopric. 
Workmen in every port in Normandy were busy in building 
and repairing ships for the passage of the Channel. Every 
inland town resounded with the hammers of smiths and 
armourers, forging spears, swords, and coats of mail. Every 
road w'as almost blocked up with waggons conveying to the 
rendezvous provisions for the support of the vast army 
which was rapidly assembling. Every part of his conduct, 
and almost every place in his dominions, gave indications of 
the resolutiou and foresight with which the ambitious prince 
was preparing for the invasion of a country more extensive 
and more opulent than his own, whose numerous population 
was inured to war, and eager to fight under a leader whom 
they loved, and in whose valour and military skill they 

deservedlv confided. 

%! 

When all was ready, foul winds kept the fleet in harbour 
for above a month ; but towards the end of September the 
wind changed, and on the 28th William landed, at the head of 
60,000 men, at Pevensey, on the coast of Sussex. The delay 
that had taken place was favourable to him, for, just at this 
time, a powerful fleet, which Harold had stationed off the 
coast to intercept him, had retired to procure a fresh stock 
of provisions, so that William met with no obstacle to his 
passage. He himself was one of the first that landed. As 
he sprang from the boat, he stumbled, and fell on his face. 
“ A bad omen,” said one of his soldiers. “ Not so,” rejoined 
the duke. “ I have taken possession of England. See, I 
hold it in both my hands.” 

But a short time earlier Tosti and Hardrada had landed 
in the north of England, and defeated Edwin and Morcar, 
and shut them up in York, which they besieged; but 
Harold, who had great military talents, hastened to their 
relief, and five days afterwards confronted them with an 
army superior to their own. His first step was to seek an 
accommodation with his brother, offering to reinstate him in 
his government of Northumberland. “ What,” said the 
British prince, “ will you give Hardrada, my ally ?” “ Seven 
feet of English ground for a grave,” replied the envoy of 
Harold; “ or, as Hardrada is a giant, he may perhaps have 
a foot more.” Tosti’s only virtue was fidelity to his ally, 
and he refused the conditions offered to him. In the 


HAROLD. 


33 


IV.] 

battle which ensued both he and his ally were slain, and a.d. 
Harold prepared to turn to the south to encounter a more 
serious danger. He had but little time; the defeat of 
Hardrada and Tosti took place only three days before 
William landed at Pevensey. He immediately marched 
towards Hastings and began to strengthen his position. 
Harold had been wounded in the late battle, but did not 
suffer that circumstance to abate his energy. His late suc¬ 
cess had filled him with undue confidence, and he made no 
doubt of crushing the Normans with as little difficulty as 
the followers of Hardrada. As he hastened onwards he 
summoned the chiefs of every district to lead their forces 
towards London to join him, but he outstripped them in his 
haste. Intelligence of his progress was sent to William by 
a friend, who warned him that in four days Harold would 
have around him 100,000 men. For those four days 
Harold would not wait; he even weakened his present force 
by sending a large fleet round the coast to cut off William’s 
escape. When he arrived in front of the invaders, he had 
with him but 15,000 men, and some of his captains advised 
him to return again towards London, laying the country waste 
as he retired, so as to distress William by want of provisions, 
if he should attempt to pursue him. His brother Gurth 
urged him to refrain from exposing his own person in the en¬ 
suing battle, and rather to resign the command to himself, 
as he was not shackled by the oath into which William had 
. surprised Harold. The superstitious timidity of his brother, 
and the judicious caution of his experienced captains, were 
alike unsuited to Harold’s confident spirit, and to his ideas 
of his duty to the people committed to his charge. He sent 
an arrogant message to William, offering him a sum of money 
to depart from the island, to which William replied in a 
similar strain, requiring him to surrender the kingdom, or 
else to meet him in single combat for the purpose of deciding 
their mutual claims. Harold refused the challenge, declar¬ 
ing that he left the issue of the coming battle to the Lord. 

The night before the battle was spent by the invaders in 
• preparing their arms and horses for the coming struggle, and 
after that in confessing their sins ; by the English in sing¬ 
ing their national songs, and feasting in anticipation of the 
triumph of to-morrow. 

On the rising ground which to this day bears the name of 
Battle, Harold formed his army in a solid phalanx, one 

D 



34 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. flank being protected by a wood, and the other by a rampart 

1006. of staves and hurdles. At daybreak on the 14th of October, 
William, in person, led his army up the slope, to charge the 
English position, mounted on a Spanish war-horse, and 
wearing round his neck the most holy of the relics on which 
Harold had taken his fatal oath. In spite of the inequality 
of numbers, the struggle was desperate, and the issue of the 
battle for a long time in doubt. The Normans advanced 
with spirit and impetuosity to the charge, but were unable 
to break the steadiness of the English infantry, which 
nation after nation of enemies has, for many ages, found 
impenetrable and invincible. Cross-bowmen and archers 
hailed missiles on them from a distance; spearmen and 
horsemen pressed them hand to hand; still they held their 
lances firm to receive their assailants, and with their terrible 
battle-axes, (the long bow had not yet become the national 
weapon,) hewed down every foeman who came within their 
reach. A report arose that William was slain; throwing 
off his helmet, he showed his features to his troops, and 
again and again led them to the charge ; but again and again 
he was driven back by that indomitable phalanx. At last 
he pretended to retreat in disorder, in the hope of tempting 
his enemies themselves to break those ranks against which his 
own efforts had proved fruitless. The manoeuvre succeeded; 
in joy and haste the English threw themselves on the retiring, 
and, as they flattered themselves, beaten enemy, and their 
dense array being thus disunited, they could no longer 
prevent a powerful body of Normans, who were moved 
forward to take advantage of their disorder, from forcing 
their line and throwing great part of the army into confusion. 
But enough remained unbroken to form a rallying point for 
the rest, and forming again, though with diminished num¬ 
bers, they still maintained the struggle. The day was 
nearly spent without William having gained any decisive 
advantage, when Harold was slain by an arrow. The fall 
of their gallant king struck a panic into the English army, 
and from that moment they offered but a feeble resistance. 
William- saw their confusion before he was aware of its 
cause, and took instant advantage of it to attack them with 
increased vigour. Harold’s brothers had fallen as well as 
himself: the soldiers had no longer a leader to guide 
their exertions, and in a few minutes their rout was com¬ 
plete, and the Norman chieftain had earned the title by 


WILLIAM I. 



35 


which he has been ever since, and ever will be known, of 
William the Conqueror 5 . 


CHAPTER V. 

WILLIAM I. 

The conquest of England cannot be reckoned an unfor¬ 
tunate event for the country: the people had made no 
advance in any respect since the days of Alfred; and, 
with nations as with individuals, not to improve is to 
become worse. They were still brave, but no additional 
tincture of literature, civilization, or humanity, had soft¬ 
ened their ferocity; experience and reflection had not 
taught them the blessings of settled government, while the 
habit of submitting to foreign invaders, to rulers not only 
of different families but of different nations, had broken 
down every feeling of loyalty, and with it all ideas of faithful 
or steady adherence to any engagement, or to any friend¬ 
ship. The clhrgy were infected with the universal de¬ 
generacy ; Dunstan had been an unscrupulous zealot for the 
advancement of his order, a bigoted and pitiless enforcer of 
his own ideas and principles; but still he was a man of 
genius himself, and an encourager of learning in others; 
austere in his own practice, indifferent to riches, inaccessible 
to corruption; and the inferior clergy, as was natural, had 
imitated in some degree the virtues of their chief. But, in 
the vicissitudes of the last hundred years ecclesiastical dis¬ 
cipline had become greatly relaxed, and the clergy had pre¬ 
served little more than the vices of their predecessors; they 
were still bigoted and unscrupulous, but they were no longer 
austere, moral, or incorruptible; study and every kind of 
industry had given place to sloth and sensuality, so that 
learning was almost extinct among them, and instead of 
being the instructors they had become the corrupters of the 
laity. 

5 Contemporaneous with some of the events mentioned in this chapter, are 
the reigns of Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, in Germany. In 955, 
Otho finally defeated the Hungarians, who threatened to overrun all Europe; 
and in 964, united Italy to the German empire. In France, in 987, Hugh 
Capet, the ancestor of the Bourbon family, was raised to the throne. 

D 2 


A.D. 

106 * 6 . 


10GG— 

1087. 




A.D. 

loeu- 

1087- 


36 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Very different was the state of the Normans: no where 
had there ever been made more rapid, or more constant 
advances in every thing that can contribute to the refine¬ 
ment and elevation of a people. It was only in the time of 
Athelstan, but little more than 100 years before, that Hollo 
had obtained from the feebleness of Charles the Simple the 
large district which, from the name of his followers, was 
thenceforth called Normandy; and Hollo was a pirate, up to 
that time recognizing no other standard of excellence than 
fearlessness, strength, and dexterity in arms; but his change 
of situation taught him new principles of action, and when 
he and his people became possessed of a home and of a 
country, he showed himself by the prudence of his conduct, 
and the equity of his legislation, worthy of the success which 
he had won by his intrepidity and energy. All his succes¬ 
sors were able princes; and when Hobert, the fifth in order, 
bequeathed his duchy to his natural son William, he left 
him the government of a people distinguished above all 
others of that time for liberality, good faith, and honesty; 
for the domestic virtues, for their zeal for literature and 
religion; while their love of glory, still as strong as when it 
prompted Hasting to invade Italy, or Hollo to refuse what 
lie considered a degrading act of homage to the king of 
France, though so rich a prize as his promised duchy 
was to be the reward of his compliance, prevented their 
military character from degenerating. With these natural 
and acquired high qualities, they were henceforth to be 
joined with a race which had shown in the time of Alfred 
and Athelstan that they contained in themselves many of 
the elements of greatness, if they had but a governor capable 
of directing them; and the union of Norman energy with 
Saxon resolution, of the vivacity of intellect of the one 
people with the steadiness and practical sense of the other, 
lias produced that desirable combination of qualities which 
has raised the united nation to a height of prosperity and 
happiness, both public and private, of which the world has 
afforded no similar example. 

The battle of Hastings was won, but the kingdom w T as 
not yet conquered; and, if there had been any successor to 
Harold of equal ability, and possessed of claims so evident 
as to unite all orders in his support, its conquest might not 
have been the result of the victory. But there was no sucli 
person: Harold had left sons, but they were too young to 


WILLIAM I. 


37 


V.] 

be put forward ; the earls Edwin and Morcar, his brothers- 
in-law, aspired to the throne, and had many partisans in the 
north of England, where their governments were situated ; 
but the candidate who was preferred in London and the 
southern districts was Edgar, the grandson of Edmund 
Ironside, from his royal descent surnamed Atheling, or the 
Noble ; and he was proclaimed king, though the main body 
of the clergy submitted to William in obedience to the 
papal bull which recognized him as the lawful sovereign. 

William at first proceeded with great caution ; marching 
along the coast to Dover, which he fortified strongly, in 
order to secure a retreat, if such a step should eventually 
be necessary: he then advanced towards London, but feared 
to alienate the citizens permanently by attacking it, and 
preferred gaining his end by gentleness and negotiation ; 
they succeeded better than violence might have done. The 
imbecility of Edgar soon became apparent to his own sup¬ 
porters, and in a short time they deposed him and submitted 
to William ; Edgar himself voluntarily took the oath of 
allegiance to him. His example was followed by Stigand, 
archbishop of Canterbury, and by the chief nobles of the 
kingdom, and 'on Christinas Day William was crowned at 
Westminster. 

The ceremony was interrupted by an event which to 
superstitious minds seemed full of evil omen for the happi¬ 
ness of a reign which had such a disastrous commencement. 
A strong body-guard of Norman troops surrounded the 
abbey, and when the archbishop put the question to the 
English and Norman nobles assembled, whether they would 
have William for their king, they raised such a shout of 
assent that the soldiers fancied that the English were making 
an attack on their new sovereign: in their alarm they 
fell on the populace and set fire to the adjacent houses. 
The tumult was appeased; but it was not so easy to allay 
the suspicion, however unfounded and irrational, that Wil¬ 
liam himself had authorized that outbreak of his country¬ 
men, or, at least, that they would not have ventured on it 
had they not felt sure that violence towards the natives was 
not an offence likely to be visited by him with any great 
severity of displeasure. 

It ..was not easy for William to reconcile his promises of 
grace to his new subjects with those of reward which he 
had held out to those by whose aid he had conquered them ; 


A.D. 

1066 — 

1007. 


A.I). 
1066 - 
1087 . 


38 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dr. 

the treasures of Harold, though he distributed them with a 
lavish hand, were insufficient for the purpose, and he was 
compelled to confiscate the possessions ol those who had 
fought against him at Hastings. But, with this exception, 
his conduct at first was mild and equitable; he enforced 
order among his troops, and prohibited all rapine and vio¬ 
lence ; he regulated the taxes with moderation, encouraged 
commerce, promoted marriages between the English and 
Normans, and gave his own niece Judith in marriage to one 
of the most powerful of the English nobles, Waltheof, the 
son of Siward; and, while he thus sought to win the affec¬ 
tions of the nation, he took precautions against any revolt 
on their part; building fortresses in different parts of the 
kingdom, and placing Norman garrisons in them to overawe 
the adjacent districts into tranquillity. 

Unhappily he presumed so much on the success of his 
measures as to return to Normandy in the spring of 1067, 
and to make a lengthened stay in that country; and the 
officers whom he appointed to govern England in his ab¬ 
sence, his half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and Eitz- 
osborne, one of his most renowned knights, were less able, 
or less inclined to repress the turbulence of the soldiers, 
who began to treat the natives with great insolence. The 
English were not yet sufficiently humbled to endure injus¬ 
tice with patience, or injury without retaliation ; discontent 
soon ripened into rebellion, and as William had taken in his 
train the most powerful of their nobles (thinking that they 
would thus be in a manner hostages for the peaceful beha¬ 
viour of their countrymen), the rebellious spirit only pro¬ 
duced a disorderly rising without concert, and without 
vigour, inadequate to shake William’s power in the smallest 
degree, but sufficient to exasperate him against the whole 
people as disaffected and treacherous. The news of the 
outbreak brought him back without delay from Normandy, 
and his mere presence in the island was sufficient to quell 
the revolt; but the fact of its having been so easily excited 
sunk deep into his mind, and, recollecting that the mild and 
paternal government of Canute had been followed after his 
death by the extinction of the Danish power, he resolved to 
avoid a similar result as far as ‘the avoidance of a similar 
line of conduct could ensure his doing so, and began to 
treat the whole nation as conquered and hostile, with re¬ 
lentless severity. The landowners were dispossessed of 


WILLIAM I. 


39 


V.] 

their estates ; all Avho had been invested with any honour¬ 
able offices were deprived of them ; even the bishops and 
abbots of English birth were expelled and replaced bv 
foreign ecclesiastics ; and, in order to prevent nocturnal 
meetings for future conspiracies, bells were ordered to be 
tolled in every town at eight o’clock in the evening, after 
which no one, on any pretence, was allowed to have a fire 
or light within his dwelling. 

These oppressive measures produced fresh rebellions: nor 
did the unhappy English trust to their own unassisted re¬ 
sources for success. The sons of Harold, who had taken 
refuge in Ireland, made an ineffectual attempt with an 
Irish army on the coast of Devonshire. A more formidable 
aid came from the Baltic, landed near the Humber amid the 
acclamations of the people, and met with great temporary 
success, taking York, destroying some of the garrisons which 
"William had stationed in that district, and a second time 
crowning Edgar king of England. William hastened in 
person to the scene of danger, bribed the Danes to depart, 
stormed York, and prepared to take inhuman vengeance on 
the inhabitants of the revolted province. That the Danes 
might no longer have allies ready to receive them in that 
part of the island which lay the nearest to their fleets, he 
determined to lay the whole district waste, exterminating 
the inhabitants, destroying farmhouses and towns, and driv¬ 
ing off the cattle. Eor nearly a hundred miles in every 
direction he depopulated the whole country so completely, 
that a century afterwards it presented to the eye of a chroni¬ 
cler, who records the fact, nothing but a barren and empty 
desert, the refuge of foxes and vermin, destitute of men, of 
crops, and of habitations. Above 100,000 persons perished 
in this inhuman massacre and devastation, which inflicted a 
severe blow on the prosperity and opulence of the whole 
island ; and has left a stain on William’s character which no 
success and no triumph can efface. , 

Such inhuman oppression could only provoke fresh rebel¬ 
lion : but every insurrection was speedily put down by the 
sleepless vigilance of the Conqueror. One rising was even 
attempted by some of the most distinguished of the Norman 
barons, whom AVhlliam had begun to treat with an arbitrary 
tyranny, to which they were wholly unused, and totally dis¬ 
inclined to submit: and they entangled in it earl Waltheof, 
who incautiously revealed it to his wife, the niece of Wil- 


A.D. 

1060 — 

1087 . 



A.D. 
1066— 
1037- 


1074. 


40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

liam. She betrayed her husband to her uncle; and the 
conspiracy, which had been more carefully matured than any 
previous design against the government, brought only ruin 
to the conspirators. The chief Normans who had been con¬ 
cerned in it, even Roger, the heir of William’s favourite, 
Fitzosborne, were confined in dungeons for life; and Wal- 
theof, the last of the English barons w T ho had been allowed 
to retain power or consideration, fell by the hand of the 
executioner. No event that had occurred during the whole 
reign broke the spirit of the English like his death. They 
put on mourning for him as for one of royal blood, wor¬ 
shipped him as a saint, and fondly believed that miracles 
were worked at his tomb. 

William, who w r ould not spare the man to whom he had 
given his own niece, was not likely to be more merciful 
towards those who could claim no connexion with him ; and 
the confiscation of the estates of all of English blood went 
on so unsparingly, that before the end of his reign there 
was scarcely one property left in the hands of him wdio had 
possessed it only twenty years before. One English bishop, 
Wulfstan of Worcester, was allowed to retain his rank till 
his death : his loyalty could not save him from the effects of 
the hatred that William had now learnt to entertain towards 
all his race, though he had borne arms on the king’s side in 
the most formidable insurrection that had broken out. But 
superstition procured him that mercy which his services 
were unable to obtain. He was cited before a council held 
in Westminster Abbey, and deposed, by a formal sentence, 
for the crime of being unable to speak French. His spirit 
rose against his oppressors. “ It belonged not to them,” he 
told them, “ to deprive him of a dignity which had been con¬ 
ferred on him by the sainted Edward: to him alone wrould 
he surrender the office which he hail received from him.” 
Then, striding across the abbey to the Confessor’s tomb, he 
stuck his pastoral staff into the solid stone so firmly, that, if 
we may believe the monks who record the transaction, no 
one present, save Wulfstan himself, could draw it out again. 
The council recognized the will of God in the miracle, and 
Wulfstan was left in possession of the rank thus solemnlY 
confirmed to him. 

The north of England had been devastated out of pitiless 
revenge. A large tract in the south, still called the New 
Forest, was laid waste in a similar manner, out of pure wan- 


WILLIAM I. 


41 


tonness, to supply tlie king with a hunting ground of suffi¬ 
cient extent near the palace, which was his usual residence, 
at Winchester. And, in addition to this needless cruelty, 
severe game law's w r ere enacted, prohibiting the slaughter of 
any animals considered beasts of chace under penalties as 
severe as those which protected the life of a man, “ for the 
king,” says an old chronicler, “loved the great game as if 
he had been their father.” 

By this organized system of tyranny, their very language 
being almost proscribed, the spirit of the English w r as 
thoroughly broken. To keep the Normans in subjection, 
William introduced the feudal system into the kingdom, 
according to w 7 hich the estates which he conferred on his 
different barons were held of him, and the owners were to 
continue his vassals, taking an oath of fealty to him, and 
owing him military service for their lands; and, with a pru¬ 
dent care to prevent their growing so powerful as to become 
independent of the crown, as was so generally the case on 
the Continent, he ordained that the tenants or vassals of the 
chief landowners should also do homage to him, and not to 
their lord; and, in a great assembly held at Salisbury, 
shortly before, his death, he received the fealty of all the 
occupiers of land in the wffiole kingdom. 

So firmly had he established his authority that he was able 
to enforce the subjection of the Church to the civil pow r er, 
and to defy the mandates of the pope,, though Gregory the 
Seventh, wffio at this time governed the papal see, was the 
most ambitious of men, had extended the papal authority to 
a degree that the most domineering of his predecessors 
never contemplated, and had a zealous and able coadjutor in 
Lanfranc, a Milanese monk, who, on the deposition of Sti- 
gand, had been made archbishop of Canterbury. But the 
imperious haughtiness of the one, and the supple craft of 
the other, were alike pow erless to move the iron will of the 
Conqueror. He permitted, indeed, the contribution called 
Peter’s pence, originally granted by the Saxon monarchs, to 
be still sent to Borne : but in reply to Gregory’s demand, 
that he should do him homage for the kingdom as a gift 
which the papal bull had conferred on him, he openly asserted 
his independence of the papal authority. In defiance ol the 
claims to exemption which the Church w r as beginning to put 
forth, he compelled the principal ecclesiastics to bear their 
full share of the burdens requisite for the defence ot the 


A.D. 

106G— 
1087. 


42 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. kingdom, and to furnish knights arid soldiers in proportion 
10G6 |- 0 ^} ]e extent of the lands held by them; he punished any 

IO87. disobedience on their part by fine and imprisonment by his 
own authority, and refused the English prelates permission 
to attend a general council which the pope summoned to 
decide on measures to be adopted against his enemies. 

William was less happy in his private, than he was pros¬ 
perous in his public life. He lost one son by an accident, 
and the three who remained filled his court with their 
quarrels. Robert, the eldest, was a prince of great bravery, 
but of a rash imperious temper, disdaining to submit to 
control even from his father; and he was jealous of his 
younger brothers, William and Henry, who, as being more 
submissive to the king’s will, enjoyed more of his favour. 
Before his invasion of England, William had promised, if he 
succeeded in his enterprise, to make over Normandy to his 
son; but when pressed to fulfil his promise, he refused to 
do so; declaring, to use his own language, that he did not 
mean to take off his clothes till he went to bed. This 
disappointment, added to the slights that he fancied, 
he received from his brothers, drove the prince into 
open rebellion ; and William, who had been for some time 
in Normandy, was forced to take arms against him. The 
king was besieging his son in the castle of Gerberoy, 
on the frontier of the duchy, and Robert, on one occasion 
heading a vigorous sally of the garrison, engaged an un¬ 
known knight in single combat; he wounded him slightly, 
and killed his horse, when the voice of the fallen warrior 
calling for another charger, revealed to him that the enemy 
who had so nearly fallen by his hand was his own father. 
Struck by remorse, he threw himself at his feet, and implored 
his pardon ; and this incident led to a reconciliation between 
them. 

The king of Erance had countenanced Robert’s rebellion, 
and after his restoration to favour had encouraged some of 
his barons to make inroads on the Norman frontier. 
William determined to avenge this insult by war, and while 
his preparations were delayed by a fit of illness, he was still 
further exasperated by a sarcasm which was repeated to 
him. He had grown very stout, and Philip hearing that 
he was still confined to his bed, expressed his wonder that the 
king of England should be as long lying in as a woman. 
William sent him word, that as soon as he was up, he would 


WILLIAM I. 


43 


V.] 

make an offering of more lights at Notre Dame than he a.d. 
would like to see 6 . The performance of his threat was fatal 1006— 
to him ; for while riding round the ruins of the town of Mante, 1087 * 
which his soldiers had burnt by his orders, his horse, step¬ 
ping on some hot ashes, plunged so violently as in some 
way or other to injure him internally, and a few days after¬ 
wards he died, in the sixty-third year of his age, having been 
king of England nearly twenty-one years. 

We have more accurate information with respect to the 
state of the land, and the general income of the kingdom 
during William’s reign, than we can obtain of that of any other 1087. 
nation in those ages, from the celebrated Domesday Book 
which he caused to be compiled, and which was in effect a 
register of all the properties and landowners throughout 
the whole kingdom, except a portion of the province of 
York. But of the population we have no such certain 
knowledge. It is generally estimated that it amounted to 
something more than a million and a half of persons at the 
time of the conquest; and a quarter of a million of foreigners 
are believed to have become settlers in the land during the 
twenty years that followed that event. But the numbers of 
those who feM in resisting the first invasion, and in the sub¬ 
sequent repeated rebellions, must have been very great; and 
when we take into consideration also, the fearful extermina¬ 
tion of the inhabitants of the northern districts, and of the 
New Forest, we must suppose that the diminution of the 
population from these causes must have fully counter¬ 
balanced the addition made to it by the immigration of the 
foreign settlers; so that it seems probable that it cannot at 
any time have exceeded the number mentioned above, of some¬ 
thing more than a million and a half of souls. 

The character of William may be easily appreciated even 
from the brief sketch here given of his reign. Full of 
ambition, yet never tempted by it to enterprises beyond his 
power ; as a warrior, he was brave and skilful; as a ruler, 
he w r as vigilant, politic, and far-sighted. On the other hand, 
he was arbitrary, revengeful, and merciless ; sparing not 
only no enemy to his power, but no obstacle to his pleasure 
or caprice. He had an abstract love of justice and order, 
but trampled on both without scruple and without remorse 
whenever the doing so appeared in the least calculated to 

6 It was the custom for women, after their confinement, to offer lighted 
candles on the altar. 





A.D. 

1066 - 

1087 . 


1087 - 

1100. 


/ 


44 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

strengthen his authority. The best eulogy of his practical 
wisdom and statesmanship is to be found in the fact, that at 
a time when legitimate sovereigns so often failed to transmit 
their hereditary dominions to their children, he was able to 
leave a foreign kingdom which he had acquired by conquest 
to his ; having laid the foundations of his power so surely, 
that at a distance of nearly eight hundred years his de¬ 
scendant still sits on the throne won by the sword of her 
ancestor. 


CHAPTER VI. 

WILLIAM II., SURNAMED RTJFUS. 

The Conqueror on his deathbed bequeathed Normandy 
to Robert, and England to his second son, William, sur- 
named Rufus, or the Red, from the colour of his hair; 
but William, who suspected that this injustice to his 
elder brother would not be popular with those on whom 
Robert’s open and liberal, though incautious and indolent 
disposition had made a favourable impression, did not trust 
to his father’s bequest for his success so much as to the 
celerity of his own measures. He had scarcely obtained 
possession of the letter in which Lanfranc was desired 
to crown him king of England, and his father was not 
yet actually dead, when he quitted Normandy, and, crossing 
the Channel, secured Dover and other strong fortresses, and 
also got possession of his father’s treasures. The moment 
that the news of the Conqueror’s death arrived Lanfranc 
complied with his dying injunction, and crowned Rufus as 
his successor. But the Norman barons, with the Con¬ 
queror’s half-brothers, Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and Robert, 
earl of Montaigne, at their head, prepared to resist him, and 
organized a conspiracy to place Robert on the throne. 
William’s operations, however, w'ere as prompt to secure as 
they had been to obtain the crown; he won the favour of 
the English by fair promises, which however he forgot to 
keep when success had made him indifferent to their sup¬ 
port, besieged and stormed the strongholds which his oppo¬ 
nents had seized, posted a formidable fleet on the coast to 
prevent any succour arriving from Normandy, and by these 



WILLIAM IT. 


45 



vigorous measures soon reduced all his enemies to sub¬ 
mission, and Robert himself agreed to accept a pension of 
5000/. a year to surrender his claims on the kingdom. But 
though Robert was thus easily satisfied, William was not; 
and as his brother’s indolence soon produced great disorders 
in Normandy, he invaded that duchy in the hope of re¬ 
uniting it to England : these disgraceful quarrels between 
the brothers were at last terminated by a compromise, in 
which it was provided that each should retain his possessions 
for his life ; but, that in the case of either dying without 
legitimate issue, the survivor should inherit his dominions. 

The Conqueror had, however, left a third son, Henry, 
born after his conquest of England, to whom he had only 
bequeathed a large sum of money, but whom Robert had put 
in possession of a portion of Normandy ; he was discon¬ 
tented at the terms of the reconciliation to which his bro¬ 
thers had agreed, foreseeing that if in consequence of it 
William should become the ruler of Normandy, he would 
certainly not allow him to retain the district which Robert 
had given him : he retired to St. Michael’s Mount, a strong 
fortress on the coast, and infested the neighbourhood by 
predatory incursions to such a degree, that both his brothers 
were forced to lay siege to it; and an anecdote is preserved 
of them, while occupied in this blockade, which marks the 
difference of their characters. The garrison was in great 
distress for want of water; so much so that Henry himself 
applied to them to relieve it : Robert not only facilitated 
his procuring it, but sent him several pipes of choice wine 
for his own table; and when William reproached him for 
the ignorance of military usages which such an act dis¬ 
played, urging that nothing would have so surely compelled 
the fortress to a speedy surrender as thirst, “How,” said 
the kind-hearted duke, “ could we let our brother die of 
thirst: where could we have found another if we had lost 
him?” Henry was soon compelled to submit; and as 
William was able to prevent Robert from showing him any 
active kindness, he was for some time in great distress; 
but the reconciliation between the two elder brothers was so 
complete, that in a war with Scotland, which took place 
shortly afterwards, Robert commanded the English army, 
defeated Malcolm Canmore, the king, and compelled him to 
do homage to the crown of England. 

William’s temper was too rapacious to allow him to 


A.D. 
1087 — 
1100. 


46 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. adhere contentedly to his agreement, and after a time he 
1087— began to renew his designs on Normandy; labouring to 
detach the king of France from his alliance with Robert, 
and tampering with the Norman barons, whom Robert’s 
want of firmness encouraged in every kind of factious dis¬ 
order ; when an opportunity presented itself of obtaining 
the object of his wishes in an easier and less openly dis¬ 
honourable manner. Peter the Hermit was just stirring 
up Europe to the first crusade, and in every country princes 
and nobles were levying troops, and availing themselves 01 
every imaginable expedient to raise money for such a distant 
and protracted expedition. No one embraced the enter¬ 
prise more warmly than the duke of Normandy, and, as his 
treasury was exhausted, he offered to mortgage his duchy to 
the king of England for 10,000 marks; William eagerly 
accepted the offer, though his exchequer also was sunk so 
low that it was only by levying a heavy contribution upon 
the whole nation, compelling even the convents to melt 
down their plate, that he was able to raise the sum re¬ 
quired. 

Towards the latter part of his reign he had a violent 
quarrel with the Church. He was as munificent as his 
brother Robert; and, as his liberality outstripped his proper 
funds, he kept the richest ecclesiastical benefices vacant, and 
seized on their revenues; and when he did fill them up, it 
was often only because he had sold them to the highest 
bidder. On the death of Lanfranc he was some years before 
he appointed a successor to the archbishopric. At last he 
conferred it upon Anselm, a Norman abbot, and a man of 
virtue and learning, but possessed of none of that worldly 
wisdom and tact which could alone have enabled him to 
continue in harmony with so haughty and headstrong a 
sovereign. There were many things, for the reform of which 
William would have seen the necessity, for he was a judi¬ 
cious and energetic ruler ; many, probably, in which, though 
not himself disapproving of them, he would have permitted 
alteration, for he was in many respects a generous and mag¬ 
nanimous prince; but the matters which Anselm chose to 
select for his animadversion were so trivial, that dictation in 
them could only provoke the contempt of any man of sense; 
while yet, such is the wayward character of the human mind, 
it was more annoying, and more likely to provoke resistance 
than interference in more weighty affairs. It was beginning 





WILLIAM II. 


47 


VI.] 

to be the fashion to wear the hair long, falling on the shoul¬ 
ders ; this the archbishop pronounced to be a contempt of 
St. Paul, who had taught, that “ if a man have long hair, it 
is a shame unto him.” Another fashion had lately intro¬ 
duced shoes with such preposterously long-pointed toes, that 
they were turned upwards, and often fastened by gold or 
silver chains to the knee; this was declared to be a violation 
of the positive command of Scripture, not to try and add a 
cubit to one’s stature 7 : and the archbishop refused the 
episcopal benediction to those who would not cut their hair 
and shorten the toes of their shoes. The courtiers consented 
to cut their hair, but were firm in refusing to give up the 
peaks of their shoes. The conscientious prelate would 
admit of no compromise; and his secretary, who has recorded 
his history, praises him for scarcely any action of his life 
more than for his rigid adherence to his principles in this 
instance. 

There were, however, also weightier matters of dispute 
between the king and the archbishop. There were at this 
time two claimants of the papal dignity, Clement and Urban; 
and Anselm wished to receive his confirmation as archbishop 
from the latter, whom William refused to consider as the 
true pope, l'his dispute had hardly been terminated by 
Urban’s conciliating the king so as to induce him to acknow¬ 
ledge him, when he was again provoked by the insufficiency 
of the equipments of the troops which Anselm, in compliance 
with the Conqueror’s regulations, furnished towards an ex¬ 
pedition with which William was preparing to invade Wales. 
Anselm resolved to go in person to the pope to request his 
decision. The king threatened that if he quitted the king¬ 
dom he would confiscate all his revenues as archbishop; and 
both parties kept their words. Urban tried in vain to 
reconcile William to his obstinate subject; and Anselm 
continued abroad till the monarch’s death, which took place 
about three years afterwards. 

The English looked upon his death as a judgment for the 
sins of his father. The Conqueror had committed no more 
cruel act of tyranny than that which has been mentioned, of 
laying waste the country between Salisbury and the sea to 
make the New Eorest. He had scarcely completed the 
devastation, when his own son Bichard met his death in 

7 Not that there is any such command ; the words of Scripture are, w Which 
of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” 


A.D. 

l o»7— 
1100. 



48 


HISTORY OF * ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. that very forest by a wound inflicted by a stag. In the 

1087 spring of the year 1100, duke Robert’s son was killed, in 

1100. same place, by a chance shot from an arrow. On the 
2nd of August, in the same year, William held a great hunt¬ 
ing feast at Winchester; and in the afternoon went forth 
with many of his most honoured knights, and among them 
a French baron, named Walter Tyrrel, whom he regarded 
with especial favour, to hunt in the same forest. An arrow 
of Tyrrel’s, aimed at a passing stag, glancing from one of the 
numerous oaks that adorn those beautiful glades (tradition 
long pointed out the particular tree, and a stone pillar still 
marks the spot where it stood), pierced the king’s breast, 

who fell dead without uttering a word. His age is not ex¬ 

actly known; but he was about forty years old, and had 
reigned not quite thirteen. 


CHAPTER VII. 

HEXRY I. 

U00—William died unmarried; and, according to the agree- 
? 135 . ment entered into between Robert and himself, which had 
been solemnly confirmed by both the English and Norman 
barons, the duke of Normandy had now an incontestable 
right to the throne. But prince Henry, who made one 
of the fatal hunting party, recollecting how William by his 
promptitude had formerly secured it, now emulated his 
rapidity of decision and action, hastened to Winchester, 
where he secured the royal treasures ; and, proceeding to 
London, by his promises and his presents, gained over the 
prelates and barons who were in that city to elect him king; 
and, on the third day after his brother’s death, he was 
solemnly crowned by the bishop of London. 

His chief partisans at first were the clergy. But the 
English also favoured his accession because he had been bom 
in England, and w r as, therefore, they flattered themselves, 
less likely to look upon them as foreigners than his elder 
brothers; and this partiality of theirs towards him was 
greatly increased by his recal of Anselm, who now acted a 
wiser part than he had chosen under Rufus, upholding the 



HENRY 1. 


49 


VII.] 

rights of the natives, and, what was almost of equal im¬ 
portance in the eyes of a superstitious people, vindicating the 
honour ot the national saints. A still greater gratification 
to them, and one from which they expected to derive still 
greater benefits, was Henry’s marriage with Edith, the 
daughter of the king of Scotland, and of Edgar Atheling’s 
sister. The Norman barons opposed this marriage most 
vehemently. They looked upon it as a degradation of their 
blood that their sovereign should ally himself with one who, 
though a princess,, belonged to a nation which they had con¬ 
quered, and which they were incessantly oppressing and 
trampling on. It was to no purpose that in deference to 
their prejudices her Saxon name of Edith was changed to 
Matilda. They sought to prevent the match by declaring 
that she had already been professed as a nun : but it was 
proved that, though she had been the inmate of a convent, 
and had occasionally worn a veil, it had been only with the 
design of protecting her honour from the ruffianism of the 
Norman soldiery; and Anselm, with the unanimous consent 
of an assembly of bishops to whom the matter was referred, 
pronounced that she had never been a nun, but that she was 
free to marry according to her own pleasure. To the end of 
her life the English believed that she was constant in her 
efforts to render her husband’s heart and government favour¬ 
able towards them, so that her epitaph records that by them 
she was called Maude the Grood Queen. If we must place 
implicit confidence in the chroniclers of this reign, it does 
not appear that they derived any great benefit from her 
exertions, for we are told that they were exposed, not only 
to the same oppression and insult as under the two pre¬ 
ceding sovereigns, but also to previously unheard-of and 
newdy devised afflictions; so that the husbandmen, unable 
any longer to bear the lawless cruelty of the barons, and the 
authorized exactions of the tax-gatherers, threw down their 
ploughshares at the king’s feet, to intimate that they re¬ 
linquished the cultivation of their native soil. All were 
not thus patient. Ever since the battle of Hastings there 
had been many bold men who, disdaining to acquiesce in the 
spoliation of their property, or to submit to a master on’ the 
lands of which they at one time had been the undisputed 
lords, had taken refuge in the woods, and from those fast¬ 
nesses had maintained a constant warfare against the usurp¬ 
ing foreigners, not encountering them in numerous hosts, 

E 


A.D. 

1100 — 
1135 . 



A.D. 
1100 - 
1135 , 


50 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

but falling upon them when found alone or in small parties, 
sometimes even storming a castle that chanced to be slightly 
defended, living on the booty they thus acquired, and, what 
was a still greater offence, on the deer that roved through 
the forests. Such men were Robin Hood and his followers, 
long celebrated in the national ballads as the enemies of the 
oppressors, and the champions of the oppressed, and since 
immortalized in one of the most brilliant tales of the mighty 
genius of our own age: but in the haughty style of the 
oppressors themselves they were called robbers and assassins ; 
nor w*as it unnatural that when taken with arms in. their 
hands, they should meet with little mercy from those to 
whom they would themselves have shown as little. But it 
is mentioned as an extraordinary piece of tyranny on the 
part of Henry, that on one occasion he permitted his chief 
justice, Raoul Basset, to seize fifty men, and put nearly all 
of them to death, and deprive the rest of their eyes, on the 
mere suspicion, which was undeserved by most of them, 
that they belonged to these bands of marauders. Still, what¬ 
ever it may occasionally be in the case of an individual, it is 
so little the habit of a nation to feel deep gratitude for a 
good will that produces no solid fruit, that we may probably 
conceive with reason that the exertions of the Good Queen 
were not altogether unsuccessful; but that her influence 
over her husband did really tend to lighten the distresses 
and ameliorate the condition of those whom she acknowledged 
as her countrvmen. 

V 

And it is not inconsistent with what we know of Henry’s 
own character, to believe that this was likely to be the case. 
Though not destitute of the stern stuff which ambition had 
implanted in the breasts of his father and his brother 
William, it was softened in him by a degree of refinement 
and learning in which they had no share, and which, to that 
unlettered age, appeared so marvellous as to spread his 
renown over Europe, and to earn him, in his own land, the 
honourable surname of Beauclerc. To an intellect so culti¬ 
vated the uniform maintenance of law and justice appeared 
worthy to be the primary object of his care; and as (whatever 
crimes may have been occasionally committed by the oppressed 
natives) the chief violators of both were* the JN'orman 
barons, he applied all his energies to bridle their presump¬ 
tion, compelling them to answer in his courts for acts of 
violence and oppression; inflicting heavy fines on some, and 


HENRY T. 


51 


VII.] 

banishing others more guilty or more obstinate from his 
dominions altogether; while he sought to counterbalance 
the power of those who remained, by ennobling some of 
the more distinguished members of the lower classes, and 
raising them by a well-judged munificence to a rank in 
which their submission to law and authority, on which he 
thought he could with reason depend, would not only serve 
as an example to many, but would enable him the more 
easily to coerce those who continued to be refractory. 

It would have been well for his fame if he had observed the 
same spirit of moderation and equity towards his brother 
Robert that guided him in his dealings with others. When 
Rufus died, Robert was in the Holy Land, leading his troops 
in the first crusade with such renown, that when the 
Holy Sepulchre was won, the assembled chieftains unani¬ 
mously offered him the kingdom of Jerusalem ; and it was 
only on his refusal of the proffered dignity that it was con¬ 
ferred on Godfrey de Bouillon. On hearing of his brother’s 
death he hastened home to assert his claim to the English 
throne, relying not only on the rights of primogeniture, but 
also on the express agreement which he had made with 
Rufus, and whjch had been formally ratified by the English 
and Norman barons. He took possession of Normandy 
without opposition, as the death of William was admitted 
to have established his right over that country, and then 
prepared to invade England, where he had a strong party 
among the barons, who were influenced not only by the re¬ 
nown which he had gained in the Holy Land, but also by 
their unwillingness to endure the separation of the two 
countries. He landed at Portsmouth at the head of a 
considerable force, but his ambition was of too vacillating a 
character for him to persevere steadily in any enterprise, 
however promising, and he listened to pacific overtures from 
Henry, which resulted in his waiving all his claims for an 
annuity of three thousand marks, and returning to Normandy. 

But if he had learnt how to conquer kingdoms, he had 
not discovered how to govern them better than he did be¬ 
fore ; under his feeble sway, Normandy again became the 
scene of rapine and bloodshed, and their inevitable concomi¬ 
tants, desolation and misery, till the nobles and clergy 
almost unanimously implored Henry to come to their aid, 
and rescue the land, which his forefathers had governed with 
such glory, from the degradation and distress into which the 


A.D. 

1100 — 

1135 . 


52 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. misrule and incapacity of his brother had plunged both it 
1100— anc [ them. Besides the natural affection which ought to 
bind brothers, Henry was under great personal obligations 
to Robert; it w T as Robert’s kindness which, as has been 
mentioned before, had saved him from experiencing the full 
weight of William’s relentless animosity; for a very in¬ 
adequate sum he had surrendered to him his right to the 
English throne; and he had recently, though never rich, 
made his queen the munificent present of a year’s payment 
of the annuity due to him for that surrender. But these 
considerations did not for a moment counterbalance, in the 
cold politic heart of Henry, the chance of obtaining so im¬ 
portant an acquisition of territory as now seemed to be 
placed within his grasp. He invaded Normandy, defeated 
him, and took him prisoner at Tenchebray, and annexed his 
duchy to his own kingdom. Edgar Atheling Tvas serving in 
Robert’s army, and fell into Henry’s hands at the same time. 
Him he treated with contempt, which seems to have been 
the only feeling he ever excited in the breast of even his 
most unscrupulous and vindictive rivals, and allowed him to 
live at large on a small pension: but Robert he kept in con¬ 
finement in Cardiff Castle for twenty-eight years, till death 
brought him that deliverance which it was vain for him to 
expect from his brother. Most historians have recorded 
that, having on one occasion endeavoured to escape, his 
eyes w r ere put out by Henry’s order, and that the misery of 
torture and blindness was added to the deprivation of 
his liberty; but this story appears to have been unknown to 
his contemporaries, and rather to have been an invention 
of later times, and we may reasonably hope, that the king’s 
memory does not deserve the imputation of a crime of such 
atrocious and needless cruelty. Robert had a son named 
William, who was long protected by the French king, who 
gave him the earldom of Elanders, and w r ho encouraged 
more than one conspiracy among the Norman barons, both 
in Normandy and England, which had for its object his re¬ 
storation to the power of which his father had been so un¬ 
justly deprived. But William died in early manhood of a 
w T ound, and Henry had nothing to fear from any other 
competitor. 

Henry had many natural children, but by his wife 
Matilda he had only one son, and one daughter named also 
Matilda, and married first to the emperor of Germany, and 


HENRY I. 


53 


VII.] 

after his death, to Geoffrey Plantagenet, earl of Anjou. It 
was on his son that all his affections were fixed; hut the 
hopes which he had formed were not destined to be realized. 
He had been in Normandy settling the affairs of that duchy, 
which his genius soon restored to order and prosperity, and 
was returning with his son, when a Norman of the name of 
Fitzstephen, the son of the man who had steered the 
Conqueror when he sailed to the conquest of England, 
begged to be allowed now to convey the Conqueror’s son 
across the same Channel. Henry had already chosen 
a ship for his own passage, but allowed the prince, some 
others of his natural children, and a vast number of young 
nobles who had followed in his train, to go in Eitzstephen’s 
ship. Fifty chosen rowers were the crew of the vessel, but 
unfortunately the young prince treated them to wine so 
abundantly as in some degree to deprive them of their 
accustomed caution and skill. They ran the vessel on the 
rocks, and every ^oul-on board her was lost, except a butcher 
who clung to the mast till daylight, and from whom the cir¬ 
cumstances of the calamity were learnt. 

The bereaved monarch’s grief was terrible. He landed in 
safety, expecting to be speedily followed by his son. When 
he did not appear his anxiety became uncontrolable, and, as 
the time wore away, his agony was so great, that when the 
news of the disaster arrived, none of his counsellors or 
friends dared to communicate it to him. At last they sent 
in a little boy to tell him what had happened, and the 
certainty of his loss seemed for a while to have overpowered 
his faculties. He did not weep, but lay motionless ; neither 
eating, nor sleeping, nor taking notice of any one. He ap¬ 
peared to have abandoned himself to despair. After a while 
the remonstrances of some faithful friends roused him from 
the state of utter insensibility in which he lay, and he re¬ 
sumed his attention to his ordinary occupations, but to the 
hour of his death no smile was ever again seen upon his 
countenance. The Normans lamented the virtues and 
talents of the young prince whom they had lost; but the 
English chroniclers exulted in his death as a more de¬ 
termined enemy of their race than any of his ancestors ; ac¬ 
cording to their account, his little finger would have been 
heavier on them than his father’s loins ; he had threatened 
to yoke them like oxen to the plough, and they looked upon 
the singular circumstance of his shipwreck in perfectly calm 


A.D. 

1100 — 

1135 . 


a.d. 
11 GO- 
1135 . 


54 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

weather, as a manifest judgment of God upon the race that 
so mercilessly oppressed them. 

Henry had been some years a widower; and now that he 
had lost his son, being anxious for male posterity to inherit 
his crown, since his only remaining legitimate child was a 
daughter, and there was as yet no instance of a woman 
becoming the sovereign of an European kingdom, he mar¬ 
ried Adelais, the daughter of the duke of Lovaine, and niece 
of Calixtus, the reigning pope. But she brought him no 
children; and his daughter was also left a childless widow 
by the early death of her husband, the emperor of Germany. 
She returned to England, and Henry held a great court at 
Windsor Castle, where he persuaded all the Norman barons 
of both England and Normandy to acknowledge her for 
his successor; the very first baron to take the oath being 
Stephen, who, on Henry’s death, was the very first to 
violate it. 

Prince William before his death had .been betrothed to 
the daughter of Eulk, count of Anjou, who was to have 
brought large estates to the crown of England as her dower. 
Unwilling to lose the advantages of this connexion, the 
king now gave the widowed Matilda to his son Geofirey, 
surnamed Plantagenet, from his passion for hunting, and 
his habit of wearing a tuft of the genista or broom-plant 
in his hunting-cap. He knighted Geoffrey at Bouen with 
great pomp, and the marriage took place in the summer of 
1127. Eor a time that union also appeared likely to be 
unproductive of results; but after six years Matilda gave 
birth to a son, named Henry, after his grandfather; and 
the king again summoned his barons, and compelled them 
to swear fealty to the infant, and to recognize him as the 
eventual successor to the throne after the death of himself 
and his daughter. It was his last public act of which any 
record is preserved. Two years afterwards he died in 
Normandy of an indigestion, produced by eating too plen¬ 
tifully of lampreys, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, and 
the thirty-fifth of his reign. 

If we judge Henry the Eirst by the standard of the time 
in which he lived, we must be of opinion that he has had 
few equals among princes. He had one great vice, an 
undue ambition, which led him into great crimes,—the 
usurpation of the kingdom of England, the expulsion of 
his brother from Normandy, and the keeping that brother 


HENRY I. 


55 


VII.] 

in confinement, who, whatever his faults may have been a.d. 
towards others, had always treated him with kindness and 1100— 
liberality. But ambition is so nearly akin to many of the 1135, 
most imposing virtues, and has so often been the parent of 
great acts, that, when productive of fortunate results, it has 
commonly received a more lenient judgment from posterity 
than it strictly deserves. And when we reflect on the misery 
to which the misgovernment of Robert reduced Normandy, we 
must acknowledge that Henry’s usurpation delivered that 
duchy, and saved England from great evils, and that it was 
fortunate for both countries that he was not endowed with 
too tender and scrupulous a conscience. In every other 
respect he seems deserving of unmixed praise. The English 
chroniclers still lamented the afflictions of their country¬ 
men, and the Norman barons were still fierce and rapacious, 
the Norman clergy more than ever dissolute and corrupt; 
still it is clear that the vigour with which he enforced justice 
must have greatly ameliorated the condition of the classes 
most exposed to oppression and injury, while the peace 
which he maintained throughout the greater part of his 
reign must have been favourable to the general prosperity 
of the kingdom. Though personally valiant and skilful in 
war, he was no lover of it, but preferred peace and order; 
possessed himself of learning and accomplishments, not only 
unusual for a layman, but superior to that of most of the 
clergy in that age, he desired to cultivate in others the 
same attachment to the softer virtues which refine the cha¬ 
racter, and embellish society, that inspired himself. Nor 
can there be a greater praise for a monarch called to reign 
over a turbulent people in a lawless age, than to have been 
the first to endeavour to substitute the ascendancy of in¬ 
tellect for that of brute force, and to teach a nation or a 
class to submit to justice and reason, which had pre¬ 
viously feared no power, and acknowledged no authority, 
but, that of mighty warriors, or wide-governing and success¬ 
ful tyrants. 




56 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

STEPHEN. 

] 135— William the Conqueror had left a daughter Adela, married 

1153. to Stephen, earl of Blois, and her two youngest sons, Stephen 
and Henry, had come to England during the reign of the late 
king, who had loaded them both with favours, had conferred 
large estates on Stephen, the elder of the two, and the 
bishopric of Winchester on Henry. When he caused the 
barons to swear fealty to his daughter, Stephen, as we have 
seen, was the very first to take the oath, which he can never 
have intended to observe; for the moment that Henry had 
expired he quitted Normandy, whither he had gone in the 
king’s train, and hastened to England to seize the kingdom. 
His noble qualities (for he seems to have had nearly every 
virtue except moderation), and his gracious affable manners, 
had gained him great popularity among all classes; and 
he made sure of finding a strong party ready to espouse his 
cause against the pretensions of a woman and an infant. 
He was not deceived. Dover and Canterbury, indeed, 
refused to admit him; but London received him with open 
arms, and saluted him as king: and William, who had 
succeeded Anselm as archbishop, made the stupid and im¬ 
probable falsehood asserted by Hugh Bigod, the steward 
of the royal household, that Henry had in his last moments 
repented of his preference for his daughter, and had de¬ 
clared his intention to appoint Stephen his heir, an excuse 
for crowning him at Westminster. 

A step more fatal to the tranquillity and prosperity of 
the kingdom could hardly have been taken; for Stephen 
was so destitute of any right to the throne, and the claims 
of Matilda and her son were so incontestable, that it was 
plain from the beginning that the pretensions of such com¬ 
petitors could only be decided by war. Stephen behaved 
with great prudence and vigour, and omitted nothing which 
could conciliate the support of his new subjects. Henry, 
on his accession, had granted a charter calculated to remedy 


STEPHEN. 


57 


VIII.] 

many of tbe evils complained of in the preceding reigns, and 
in imitation of him, Stephen now granted another, full of 
liberal promises to all classes ; and not trusting solely to 
peaceful arts, he employed the late king’s treasures in hiring 
large bodies of mercenary troops on the Continent, and in 
procuring from the pope a bull, acknowledging him as king 
of England, and threatening with excommunication every 
one who should resist him. The possession of Normandy 
followed that of England; and Matilda would have found 
herself deprived of all the ample inheritance bequeathed to 
her by her father, if she had not found a protector and 
champion in her natural brother Bobert, earl of Gloucester, 
who in her cause soon displayed the most eminent qualities 
of a warrior and a statesman. 

The first person however to strike a blow for her was her 
uncle David, king of Scotland. He collected a large army 
and invaded England, penetrating as far as Northallerton in 
Yorkshire. The Norman barons met in equal numbers to 
oppose him, and, to excite the English to serve willingly in 
their cause, they brought out of the Saxon churches the 
banners of the old Saxon saints, of St. Cuthbert, St. Wil¬ 
frid, and St. J»ohn of Beverley, uniting them all in a huge 
Standard, from which the battle which ensued has taken its 
name. The clansmen of the highlands and of the isles 
made an imposing show ; but one aged chieftain, whose 
name was at a subsequent era immortalized by the heroic 
deeds of his descendant, Bobert de Brus, the lord of Annan- 
dale, urged their monarch to forbear to attack a nation 
which had powerfully assisted him in reducing his own 
unruly subjects to order. David disregarded his advice, and 
suffered his nephew to insult him for giving it. The aged 
warrior renounced his fealty to Scotland, and joined the 
English camp. The Scotch battalions rushed to the charge 
with the claymore : they were encountered by the terrible 
arrows of the English bowmen, which, in this fight, for the 
first time superseded the ancient battle-axe, and were 
chased to the Tyne, at that time the boundary of the two 
kingdoms. 

The victory however, though important, did not give that 
stability to Stephen’s throne that it would have done in the 
case of a sovereign with a better right to it; for the defect 
of his title embroiled him with the barons, who availed them¬ 
selves of the insecurity of his position to recover the privileges 


A.D. 

1135 — 
1153 . 



58 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CHT. 

a.d. of which his predecessor had deprived them ; and with the 

135 bishops, who envying them their power of plunder and 
oppression, sought to place themselves on a similar footing, 
building castles and fortresses, formidable alike to the lower 
classes and to the sovereign. Stephen was unable to subdue 
the barons; but adopted resolute measures with the pre¬ 
lates, storming their castles, and imprisoning some of them¬ 
selves : when, to his surprise, his own brother, the bishop of 
Winchester, who had received a commission as the legate of 
the pope, took the part of his spiritual brethren, and com¬ 
pelled Stephen to abandon the hostile proceedings which he 
had begun to employ against them. 

He could no longer afford to add to his enemies unneces¬ 
sarily, for earl Eobert had now completed his preparations, 
and sent him a defiance, renouncing his allegiance to him, 
and requiring him to surrender his crown to his sister; and 
to give effect to his words, Matilda herself landed in Eng¬ 
land with a gallant train of knights, and established her 
court at Arundel Castle. After long negotiations and 
several skirmishes of slight importance, Stephen was de¬ 
feated and taken prisoner on the banks of the Trent; 
and Matilda was acknowledged as queen, and crowned 

1141. Winchester. Unhappily she did not use her- triumph 
with moderation ; but treated Stephen’s partisans w T ith such 
severity that his wife, whose name also was Matilda, was 
able to reassemble them in arms ; and in one of the battles 
which ensued she took earl Eobert prisoner. Stephen 
was exchanged for Eobert, and the war continued, till on 
the death of her brother, the empress-queen fled from Eng¬ 
land, and for a very brief period peace was restored to the 
kingdom. 

U4G. Normandy had followed the lead of England in submission 
to Stephen, and, on his capture, in acknowledging Matilda; 
but now, when she was forced to retire from the island, he 
found that her party was so much strengthened in her con¬ 
tinental dominions by the influence of her husband’s family 
and the rising talents of her son Henry, that he could not 
again recover his footing in the duchy. And soon after his 
recovery of the kingdom, his partisans in England were 
greatly discouraged by the pope laying it under an interdict 
as a punishment for Stephen’s refusal of permission to the 
English bishops to attend a council which he had summoned 
at Eheims. In that age of superstition and ignorance an 


STEPHEN. 


59 


tiii.] 

interdict was the most dreaded weapon in the armoury of 
the see of Home. Excommunication was confined to one, 
or at most to a few individuals, and inflicted for their own 
real or imaginary errors; but an interdict was levelled at a 
whole province, or nation, for offences in which it was not 
commonly alleged that the people themselves had any share : 
while it lasted the churches were closed, no prayers were 
offered to God, the sacraments of the Church were refused 
to the dying, the last offices of piety and humanity were 
. withheld from the dead. It seems monstrous now that any 
pontiff should have had the impiety to issue such a sen¬ 
tence, or that any nation should have been so besotted as to 
submit to it; but men had not yet begun to subject the 
claims of the Church of Home to the test of reason ; the 
fetters in which the priesthood had bound the thoughts 
required a freer exercise of the mind to shake them off than 
the world was as yet capable of, and in the twelfth century 
there was no nation and no monarch so powerful or so bold 
as to venture wholly to brave her threats and to disregard 
her sentences. 

When Henry arrived at the age of sixteen he repaired 
to Scotland «fo receive knighthood from his uncle, king 
David; and during his sojourn in that country he raised 
new hopes in the hearts of his English adherents by the 
valour and military skill which he displayed in inroads 
upon the English frontier, and by his general prudence 
and affability. Two years afterwards his mother made 
over to him the supreme power in Normandy. On the 
death of his father Geoffrey he became lord of Anjou and 
Maine, and in the year 1151, he added more largely to 
his dominions by his marriage with Eleanor. She was 
many years older than himself, and had been divorced by 
Louis VII., king of France, for her gallantries; but she 
w r as duchess of Guienne, and possessed of several of the 
richest provinces of France, and Henry overlooked every 
other consideration for the sake of the vast political ad¬ 
vantages which such an union promised. Fortified by 
this great accession of power, and the additional influence 
which the possession of such considerable continental domi¬ 
nions gave him, he invaded England with a considerable 
army, gained some trifling advantages over Stephen, but 
before any decisive action could take place, negotiations 
were set on foot, and it was agreed that Stephen should 


A.D. 

1135— 

1153. 


1148. 




A.D. 

1135- 

1153. 


1154- 

118.9. 


60 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

retain the sovereignty during his life, and that at his death 
Henry should succeed to the kingdom. That event took 
place the very next year. In October, 1154, Stephen died 
after a reign of nearly nineteen years,—years of great misery 
to England from the almost ceaseless civil wars to which, 
his usurpation gave rise, though, had he been a lawful king, 
he was endowed with every quality calculated to have made 
his government popular, and with nearly every talent re¬ 
quisite to render it prosperous and beneficent. 


CHAPTER IX. 

HENRY II. 

l 

Ho monarch since Charlemagne had possessed such exten¬ 
sive territories as belonged to Henry the Second on his 
accession to the throne of England. His father, his 
mother, and his wife were all sovereigns of important 
states in the Erench territory, and all their posses¬ 
sions now centred in him; so that he was master of 
above a third of France; and when he had added Brittany 
to his dominions, as he did shortly afterwards, he was lord 
of the entire northern and western coasts, from Picardy to 
the Pyrenees. In France he was more powerful than the 
king himself, and the abilities of his grandfather had ex¬ 
tended the reputation of England upon the Continent; 
nor had the opinion of her power and importance been 
materially diminished by the miseries of the late civil wars. 
When he heard of Stephen’s death he was in Normandy, 
engaged in military operations against one of his discon¬ 
tented barons; and so confident did he feel that his power 
in England was built on a sure foundation, that he did not 
depart to take possession of his new dominions till he had 
reduced his rebellious vassal to submission. His mother, 
who by her acquiescence in the treaty between him and 
Stephen had silently abandoned her prior claim on the 
kingdom, remained as governor in Normandy when he 
quitted that shore in December, 1154. He was received 
with acclamations in London, and crowned with his queen 
at Westminster on the 19th of that month. 



HENRY II. 


61 


IN.] 

The first acts of his reign were as wise as they were 
popular. The land was overrun with the foreign merce¬ 
naries whom Stephen had brought over; the poorer classes 
were oppressed more than ever by the barons, whom, from 
the defect in his title, he had not ventured to curb with the 
same strong hand as his predecessors, and who had taken 
advantage of his circumstances to resume their habits of 
rapine and extortion; and all classes were suffering severely 
from the adulteration of the coinage, which in the late 
troublous times had become general. Henry removed the 
foreign soldiers from the kingdom, restored authority to the 
laws, demolishing many of the baronial castles, appointing 
learned men as judges, and making frequent progresses, as 
they were called, through the different counties, to see that 
they administered the law without favour, partiality, or 
corruption; and he issued a new coinage of the ancient and 
legal purity, thus removing at one sweep the causes of 
complaint that pressed most heavily on the people. He 
checked the Welsh, who were disposed to continue the 
incursions that the circumstances of the last reign had 
invited them to make on his frontiers, though in one battle 
among the mountains a portion of his army was defeated, 
and his whole force would have been routed if it had not 
been for his own personal exertions and military skill; and 
thus in a very short time he repaired most of the evils of 
Stephen’s usurpation. 

He had been king nearly four years, when his brother 
Geoffrey died, who a little while before his death had 
obtained possession of the county of Nantz by the elec¬ 
tion of the inhabitants. Henry now claimed Nantz as 
his brother’s heir; but Conan, duke of Brittany, seized 
it as belonging of right to his principality. Louis of 
Trance was not disinclined to interfere in the dispute, 
but Henry conciliated him by a visit, during which he con¬ 
tracted his son and heir to Louis’s daughter Margaret, 
though they were both infants; and Margaret was to be 
entrusted to a Norman baron for her education: and when, 
secured from any interruption in that quarter, he had com¬ 
pelled Conan to surrender Nantz, he formed another con¬ 
nexion with him, obtaining Constance his only daughter 
and heiress for his third son Geoffrey; in consequence of 
which betrothal, on the death of the duke of Brittany, an 
event which took place about seven years afterwards, he 


A.D. 

1154— 
1189. 


1185. 






A.D. 

1154- 

1189. 


62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

took possession of that duchy as the guardian of his son and 
daughter-in-law. Excited by his success to aim at further 
acquisitions, he invaded Toulouse, to which he had a legiti¬ 
mate claim, as Eleanor his queen was the heiress of William 
the Fourth, count of that territory; and Louis, while 
Eleanor was his wife, had looked upon her claim as incon¬ 
testable, but now that she was married to one of whose 
power he was so jealous, his opinion changed, and he threw 
himself into the city to protect her cousin Eaymond, who 
was in actual possession of the principality. Henry had a 
more permanent and obedient army than had ever been at 
the command of his predecessors, having commuted the per¬ 
sonal service of his English vassals for a payment in money, 
which he made use of to levy troops who were willing to 
serve as long as he required them, while the period during 
which the knights were bound to remain in arms was only 
forty days. And he might easily have stormed the city and 
taken Louis prisoner, but he abstained from a step which, 
in those times of feudal reverence for superiors, would have 
looked like offering personal violence to his liege lord, re¬ 
tired from the walls, and made peace with the French 
monarch, which was nearly disturbed by his wish to obtain 
possession of Gisors, which, as a part of the princess Mar¬ 
garet’s dowry, had been entrusted to the Templars to be 
delivered to Henrv after the celebration of her marriage 
with the infantine bridegroom. Henry now caused the 
wedding to be solemnized, and took possession of Gisors; 
but Louis complaining that he had been overreached, would 
have declared war against him for his conduct, had it not 
been for the mediation of pope Alexander, then a resident 
in France. The two sovereigns met him at the castle of 
Courcy on the Loire, and though he was at this time a 
fugitive from Home, where his rival Victor was in possession 
of the triple crown, they treated him with such respect as 
to dismount from their horses to receive him, and each 
holding a rein of his palfrey, conducted him thus in triumph 
to the castle. 

Having thus settled his affairs on the Continent, he 
returned to England, which had been ably governed during 
his absence by the earl of Leicester and Kichard de Lucy, 
whom he had united in the office of great justiciary, a post 
not hitherto usually held by a layman, but which Henry, 
who perceived the necessity of repressing the growing power 


HENRY IT. 


63 


IX.] 

of the clergy, did not choose to entrust to one of their body. 
But the minister whom he regarded with the greatest favour, 
and in whom he placed the highest confidence, was Thomas 
Becket, a man of respectable but not of noble birth; and 
what was more remarkable, of English descent; for, so com¬ 
pletely had this race been proscribed by their Norman con¬ 
querors, that though almost a century had elapsed since the 
battle of Hastings, in all that time not one Englishman had 
been allowed to rise to any considerable post in his native 
country. His abilities had recommended him at an early 
age to the favour of archbishop Theobald, who had made 
him archdeacon of Canterbury; and, having attracted the 
notice of Henry, who was anxious to discover, and able to 
appreciate merit of any kind, he was made chancellor of the 
kingdom, and speedily became the monarch’s most chosen 
councillor. Honours and lucrative grants were heaped upon 
him, and he was entrusted with the education of prince 
Henry, the king’s eldest son. His various preferments 
made him enormously rich, and his magnificence and luxury 
was such as had never before been beheld in a subject of 
any kingdom in Europe. When he attended Henry on one 
of his warlike expeditions, he carried with him 700 knights 
of his own household, 1200 more whom he engaged to serve 
him for pay, and 4000 hired soldiers; and (what made almost 
equal impression on the chroniclers of the time) when at 
home in his own palace, he provided clean straw every day 
for the nobles who came uninvited to his table, that they 
might not soil their clothes by sitting on the floor. As a 
minister he was vigorous, and at the same time prudent. 
Many of Henry’s wisest measures are attributed to his 
advice; and he cordially concurred with his master in com¬ 
pelling the clergy to bear their share of the burdens of the 
ldngdom, and in abridging many of the privileges which their 
ambition and arrogance led them to assert. His conduct 
in forcing them to bear their proportion of the scutages, as 
the commutation of the knight’s service for a pecuniary 
payment was called, had even brought upon him the severe 
displeasure of his early friend and patron Theobald. And 
on Theobald’s death, in the eighth year of Henry’s reign, in 
spite of the warnings of his mother, and the opposition and 
vigorous remonstrances of the bishops who were to elect 
him, the king named him as*his successor, confident that he 


A.D. 

1154— 

1189. 


1162. 



A.D. 

] 154- 

liaa. 


64 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

would be as compliant as archbishop, as he had found him 
as chancellor. 

He was speedily undeceived. While his appointment 
was doubtful (audit was delayed above a twelvemonth by the 
unanimous reluctance of the bishops, which was only over¬ 
ruled at last by the king’s positive command) nothing in 
Becket’s conduct seemed to indicate that he was disposed 
to take a different view of his position from that which he 
had previously entertained. He continued to study the 
king’s humour with the same course of jovial feasting, of 
hunting and hawking as before, and to indulge his own 
taste for display by undiminished pomp and magnificence. 
But no sooner was his election formally announced, than 
a total change took place both in his outward demeanour, 
and in his conduct. He made as ostentatious a parade of his 
humility as he had ever made of his pride, washing the feet 
of beggars, wearing sackcloth next his skin, and allowing even 
that to become filthy and full of vermin for want of being 
changed, while his food, and the water which was his only drink, 
were studiously made disagreeable to the palate, his prayers 
were incessant, his scourgings frequent and conspicuous. 
When he had thus given, as it were, public advertisement 
of the rigour of his future virtue, he proceeded in the path 
he had marked out for himself with a view to the aggran¬ 
dizement of the order to which he now belonged. Without 
consulting the king he resigned the chancellorship, on the 
plea that his new duties were so onerous as to require all 
his attention, though that office had hitherto been invariably 
filled by a bishop; and though the chancellors of the 
empire at that very time were the archbishops of Mentz 
and Cologne. Henry was exceedingly annoyed, and in¬ 
sisted on his also resigning his archdeaconry, which he was 
very unwilling to do, as its emoluments made it one of the 
richest pieces of preferment in the kingdom ; but when he 
found the king inflexible, he began to retaliate by an in¬ 
vasion of the royal prerogative. He summoned Henry him¬ 
self to surrender to him the town and castle of Eochester, 
and the earl of Clare to yield up the barony of Tunbridge, 
though it had belonged to his family ever since the con¬ 
quest, on the plea that these possessions had formerly 
belonged to the Church of Canterbury, and were therefore 
incapable of being alienated from it, and went so far as to 


HENRY II. 


65 


IX.] 

excommunicate the lord of the manor of Eynsford for re¬ 
sisting his claim to appoint a priest to the living of that 
parish, though he was compelled by Henry t£. withdraw that 
sentence. 

More important causes of difference soon arose between 
the king and his ambitious and intractable subject. The 
encroachments attempted b} r the ecclesiastics in every king¬ 
dom in Europe were daily increasing, and the privileges and 
exemptions which they asserted were of such a character, and 
of such importance, that, if granted, they would have placed 
the whole constitution in subjection to them, and would 
have rendered the greatest nobles, and even the sovereign 
himself, mere puppets in comparison with the meanest 
minister of the Church. These consequences Henry fore¬ 
saw, and was determined to prevent; and Becket, while 
chancellor, appeared to share his views, and had acquiesced 
in the severe reprimand he gave the bishop of Chichester 
for seeking to uphold “ the papal authority, which was 
derived from the mere concessions of men, against that of 
a king, which was derived immediately from Gfod Him¬ 
self.” The Conqueror had incautiously been led to order 
that all ecclesiastics should be tried by the ordinary, and, 
construing this into an exemption from all secular jurisdic¬ 
tion, they established, in effect, a complete impunity to 
themselves for every sort of crime; and this impunity 
generated such a lawlessness of conduct, that in the first 
few years of Henry’s reign above a hundred homicides were 
committed by the clergy, while their acts of rapine and 
licentiousness were too numerous to be recorded, or even 
calculated. More recently they had introduced another 
practice, if possible still more monstrous and mischievous 
in principle than the other, and the parent of that sale of 
indulgences which at a later period alienated so large a 
portion of the Christian world from the Church of Rome. 
Their authority to inflict penances for sin had long been 
admitted, and they had lately begun to teach that the 
redemption of these penances for a sum of money was 
equally efficacious for the pardon of the sinner, with the 
submission to the punishment enjoined by the confessor. 
There were few nobles in that age who were not glad to 
purchase a licence for their debaucheries and cruelties at 
so easy a rate; and it was computed that from this source 
alone more money flowed into the priests’ coffers than all 

r 


A.D. 

1154— 

1189. 


A.D. 

1 I 54- 
11(31). 


66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

the taxes produced to the king’s exchequer. These and 
other pretended rights of the Church Henry resolved to 
terminate; and having summoned an assembly of the nobles 
and bishops at Clarendon, he procured the passing of a set 
of laws, from the place of meeting commonly known as 
the constitutions of Clarendon, which defined the matters 
in dispute between the Church and the civil power with 
precision, put an effectual stop to all future encroachments 
of the clergy, established the superiority of the civil over 
the ecclesiastical power, and in their ultimate consequences 
secured the independence of England ; and, that the clergy 
might not at any future time pretend that they had not con¬ 
sented to these laws, and were therefore not bound by them, 
he desired all the bishops to affix their seal to them, and pro¬ 
mise to observe them faithfully. Becket at first refused ; 
but, finding that he stood alone in his opposition, and that 
Henry was resolved to compel his assent, he at last swore 
to observe them legally with good faith, and without any 
fraud or reservation. The pope, however, when applied to 
by the king to confirm these enactments, refused his sanction 
to the greater part of them; on which Becket, when he found 
himself likely to be supported in his opposition to the king, 
retracted his oath, and endeavoured to persuade the other 
prelates to imitate his example; imposing penances upon 
himself for his compliance, and entreating absolution from 
the pope both for having taken the oath and for the future 
violation of it. 

There was now open war between the king and the 
archbishop ; and there can be no doubt that up to this 
point the king had right wholly on his side; but in the 
further conduct of the dispute he lost his temper, and many 
of the steps that he took in it w r ere devoid of wisdom and of 
justice. He instigated one of his officers to bring an action 
against the archbishop for some land ; and though Becket, by 
acknowledging the authority of the court, gave a practical 
obedience to the most important of those very constitutions 
which were the cause of their quarrel, Henry took offence 
at his non-compliance with some trifling formalities, and in 
a great council at Northampton caused him to be declared 
guilty of treason for despising the king’s court, and con¬ 
fiscated all his property. Not content with this severity, 
he demanded of him the repayment of large sums which he 
asserted to be due from him; and when the archbishop had 


HENRY II. 


67 


IX.] * 

satisfied these demands, he made the enormous claim of AD - 
44,000 marks, on the ground that, while chancellor, he had jJgjJ' 
received the revenues of the vacant dignities of the Church, 
and was bound to account for them. Becket’s answer that 
when he was consecrated archbishop, the justiciary, with 
the king’s consent, had given him a full release from all 
such claims, must be admitted to have been sufficient; but, 
though the poor sympathized with his affliction, the nobles 
were all on the side of the king, and it was plain that the 
justice of his defence in this instance would not avail him. 

He determined to represent his cause as the cause of re¬ 
ligion and of God. He went in state to church, and cele¬ 
brated the mass of St. Stephen, beginning “ Princes sat and 
spake against me;” then, clothed in his episcopal robes, 
and bearing aloft his silver cross, he marched into the 
assembly, and took the seat that belonged to him by virtue 
of his office. The assembly, however, were not so awed by 
his dignified demeanour as to be deterred from voting a 
sentence of imprisonment against him; but he interrupted 
them when about to pronounce it by appealing to the pope, 
and then quitted the apartment. The same night he left 
Northampton, and, hastening to the coast, took a small 
boat, and fled 'to the Continent. He had now put himself 
in the wrong by his appeal to the pope, which violated the 
constitutions which he had sworn to observe, and which, 
even had he not consented to them, were not the less the 
law of the land. But Henry, in his turn, violated every 
principle of justice when he banished all his kindred, of 
every sex and age, and Confiscated the property of all 
whom he suspected of being favourably inclined towards 
him. 

He found shelter and protection in Prance, but from the IIGo. 
pope he did not receive the uncompromising support on which 
he had calculated. Afraid to offend Louis, and yet more 
alarmed lest Henry should, as he threatened, support the rival 
claimant of the papal dignity, Alexander exclaimed in despair 
that he was between two hammers. At last, when Becket 
seemed resolved to drive matters to extremities, and from his 
place of exile at Pontigney fulminated excommunications 
against all the king’s party, Alexander, seriously apprehensive 
that the king might throw off, not only his deference for him¬ 
self, but his allegiance to the papacy, reprimanded Becket for 
his violence, admonished him to adopt a more moderate and 

e 2 


68 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. *[CLI. 

a.d. pacific conduct, and even promised Henry that Becket should 

1)54— be suspended till he should restore him to his royal favour. 

1189. Whether Henry had ever been thinking seriously of dis¬ 
owning all allegiance to, and separating England from, all 
dependence upon Rome, cannot now be decided ; but such 
an event, though a most happy one when it did take place, 
would, in his time, have been most unfortunate for the 
country and for true religion; for manifold as the evils of 
the Church of Rome were, the world was not, as yet, ripe 
for their reformation. Education had not spread sufficiently 
for men to appreciate the truth ; nor had men’s minds been 
accustomed to reason with sufficient independence for them 
to discover it: and the probability is, that the separation 
from Rome, if precipitated, would only have produced a re¬ 
action which would have resulted in riveting her chains 
upon our nation more firmly than ever, and in postponing, 
perhaps for centuries, the enlightenment of the world. 

1170. Becket had been in exile six years, when the mediation 
of the king of France and the pope produced a reconciliation 
between him and Henry. At a conference at Freitville, in 
Touraine, they entered into mutual explanations; and the 
king showed such eagerness to welcome his subject’s return 
to his duty, that he condescended to hold his stirrup while 
he remounted his horse. As however he refused to give him 
the kiss of peace, on the plea that to do so abroad would 
look like compulsion, Becket’s friends distrusted the 
sincerity of his good will. And the archbishop soon gave 
equal proof that neither time nor adversity had lowered his 
pride, or softened his disposition. 

During his exile Henry had determined to have his 
eldest son crowned as his successor ; Becket, who had heard 
of his intention, procured letters from the pope, forbidding 
any other of the English bishops to take upon themselves 
an office which belonged only to the primate ; but the arch¬ 
bishop of York and the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury 
disregarded the prohibition, and crowned the young prince 
in despite of it. Ho circumstance that had yet befallen him 
excited his wrath more than the invasion of what he claimed 
as his peculiar privilege. He was not pacified by the 
assurance of Henry that the ceremony must be repeated, 
since the French princess, his son’s bride, had not been 
crowned with her husband, and that he should officiate at 
its repetition; but procured from the pope a sentence of 



HENRY II. 


69 


IX.] 

suspension against the archbishop, and of excommunication 
against the bishops ; and sent these letters before him to 
herald his return to England. It was plain that lie intended 
to renew the contest with the king more fiercely than ever. 
The excommunicated prelates crossed the sea to lay their 
complaints against him before Henry, who was still in 
Normandy, and the king in his perplexity complained aloud, 
that he had no one to deliver him from that turbulent 
priest. The words were but a natural sally of impatient 
indignation, but unhappily, four of his knights, who heard 
them, and who believed, with sufficient reason, that their 
master would have no peace while the archbishop lived, gave 
them a meaning which he never intended them to convej r , 
and hastened to England to deliver him in the most effectual 
way. On the 29th of December they reached Canterbury, 
and murdered Becket in the cathedral while he was pre¬ 
paring to hear vespers. 

When the news of the deed reached Henry, his vexation 
was extreme ; nor could any event have happened more un¬ 
fortunate for his interests at the moment. The unprovoked 
folly and insolence of Becket’s conduct in openly seeking 
a renewal of the quarrel between the king and himself, would 
have alienated every reasonable person in every country 
from his cause; but now his murder, aggravated in the 
enormity of the crime by the sanctity of the place in which 
it was perpetrated, reversed the picture, and made him so 
generally looked upon as a martyr, that the Church of 
Home, in whose cause he had fallen, met with the approba¬ 
tion of all her votaries when she canonized him as a saint. 
Henry sent ambassadors to Home to protest that he had 
never authorized nor imagined the murder, and to disown 
its perpetrators; and after long negotiations the pope 
admitted his innocence, though he imposed a heavy penance 
on him for the rash words which had been the cause of so 
unpardonable an atrocity. 

Henry now turned his attention to the conquest of Ire¬ 
land, a design which he had meditated for some time. That 
island was divided into five small kingdoms, the sovereigns 
of which were in the habit of electing one of their body to be 
the supreme monarch of the wffiole. One of the five, Dermot, 
king of Leinster at this time, was a prince of unusually 
savage and odious character; he had oppressed the nobles 
of his province, and aggravated the cruelty with which he 


A.D. 

1154— 

1189. 


70 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. treated them by the grossest treachery; and in 1153 he 
1154— ] iac j f llr ther provoked the indignation of his brother sove- 
reigns by carrying off Deworgilla, the wife of O’Ruarc, 
prince of Breffany, a subordinate district of Connaught, the 
ruler of which province was then the supreme king of Ire¬ 
land. For many years dissensions, sometimes breaking out 
into actual civil war, distracted the island on his account; 
till at last, when Boderic, who had previously succeeded his 
father as king of Connaught, in 1106 succeeded also to the 
supreme authority in the island, he united all parties 
against Dermot, who, after some ineffectual struggles to 
maintain his power, fled to England to implore the aid of 
Henry. As long before as the year 1155, Henry had taken 
advantage of the elevation of Breakspear to the papacy, the 
only Englishman who ever attained to that dignity, to obtain 
from him a grant of Ireland, and permission to annex it to 
his own dominions, on the condition of his paying to the 
pope annually for ever a penny for every house in that 
island. But he had hitherto been too much occupied to 
avail himself of this sanction to his designs, and, when 
Dermot besought his aid, his quarrel with Becket pre¬ 
vented him from at once taking advantage of the open¬ 
ing afforded him, but he gave the deposed sovereign letters 
to his nobles, authorizing all who were disposed to do so to 
render him assistance. Strongbow, earl of Pembroke, and 
Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen, knights of high reputation, will¬ 
ingly engaged in the enterprise, and in the year 1169 Fitz¬ 
stephen seized Wexford. Strongbow, whose preparations 
were more extensive, delayed his expedition till the follow¬ 
ing year ; and before he set out he received a mandate 
from Henry, recalling the permission he had given, and for¬ 
bidding him to leave the kingdom. He disregarded it, 
sailed, took Waterford by assault, and celebrated his mar¬ 
riage with Eva, the daughter and heiress of Dermot, whose 
inheritance had been his principal temptation to undertake 
the expedition. Henry was alarmed at the progress which 
he was making, which seemed likely to end in his erecting 
Ireland into an independent kingdom for himself, and thus 
defeating the views which Henry himself entertained; and 
issued an edict forbidding all intercourse with Ireland, and 
recalling those of his subjects who were already in that 
country ; but his apprehensions were pacified by the politic 
submission of Strongbow, who disclaimed all such designs 


HENRY II. 


71 


IX.] 

as the king’s jealousy had attributed to him, and declared 
himself prepared to surrender all the places which he had 
conquered to the king the moment that he appeared in the 
country. In October, 1171, Henry sailed from Milford 
and landed near Waterford. Before the end of the year 
he had received the submission of all the native princes of 
the island except Boderic, king of Ulster, and in the spring 
of the ensuing year he returned to England, having in so 
short a time, and with so little trouble acquired the sove¬ 
reignty of an island but little inferior to the dominions 
which he at that time possessed in Great Britain, and one 
which, from the excellence of its harbours, the fertility of 
its soil, the valour and lively genius of its inhabitants, well 
deserves to be considered what it is so commonly entitled, 
“ the sister kingdom.” 

Henry had four sons, Henry, Bichard, Geoffrey, and 
John; all now rising to man’s estate: but their behaviour 
to him, though the most affectionate and indulgent of pa¬ 
rents, caused him more grief and difficulty than even Becket 
himself; indeed, his very liberality towards them was the 
cause of their ill-treatment of him. He had destined each of 
them to be the lord of ample territories : Henry had already 
been crowned fis his successor in England, and Normandy, 
and the adjacent districts ; Bichard was appointed heir of 
Guienne and Poitou; Geoffrey inherited Brittany in right of 
his wife ; and John, the youngest, was intended to receive 
Ireland as his portion. Unhappily he had given Eleanor, 
his queen, ground for jealousy by numerous infidelities, and 
she took the wicked revenge of exciting her children to re¬ 
bellion against their father. Louis also, whose daughter 
Prince Henry had married, instilled into his son-in-law’s 
mind the idea that as he had been already crowned (though 
in those days it was common, especially in Erance, to crown 
the son in the father’s lifetime without the ceremony being 
supposed to give him a right to any thing beyond the 
eventual succession) he could lawfully claim a share, if not 
the whole, of his father’s dominions ; and he worked so 
skilfully on the ambitious, aspiring temper of the young 
prince that he declared war against the king, and his bro¬ 
thers, Bichard and Geoffrey, ranged themselves on his side. 
Henry applied to the pope for his mediation, who was 
willing to interpose it in so unnatural a quarrel, but who 
found his interference fruitless; and to his barons for aid, 


A.D. 

1154— 

1189. 





A.D. 

1154— 

1189. 


1174. 


72 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

but they were so discontented with the vigilance of his 
government and with the rigorous justice with which he had 
restrained their lawlessness, that they were more inclined 
to lessen his power than to uphold it; and Henry, though 
possessed of more ample dominions than any sovereign in 
Europe, was forced to rely on the bands of mercenaries 
called Braban^ns, who in those days infested the Continent, 
offering the service of their swords to any power that would 
pay for them, as his chief defence against those who were 
most bound to honour and to defend him. William, king of 
Scotland, also known in Scottish annals as the Lion, from 
his being the first to bear that device on his royal shield, 
thought the opportunity favourable for recovering North¬ 
umberland and Cumberland, which his brother Malcolm had 
ceded in the early part of his reign; but in the year 1174 
he was taken prisoner in an accidental skirmish, and when 
Henry’s own vigour on the Continent and that of Bichard 
de Lucy, whom he had left as guardian in England, brought 
his confederated enemies to agree to a peace, William was 
compelled also to surrender Berwick and other inferior for¬ 
tresses, and to do homage to Henry for the crown of Scot¬ 
land itself. It is a singular proof of the superstition of the 
age that his capture was commonly attributed, not to his 
own want of caution, or to the skill of De Lucy, his con¬ 
queror, but to the fact of Henry on that very day having 
made atonement at Becket’s tomb for the rash words to 
which that prelate’s death was attributed, and having re¬ 
ceived full absolution from the Church for all the share that 
he could be supposed to have in that atrocity. 

The peace that ensued left Henry at leisure to provide, as 
he had it greatly at heart to do, for the future tranquillity 
of the land, by introducing a better system of laws, and 
providing, at the same time, for their more regular and cer¬ 
tain administration. He abolished the pernicious principle 
of imposing only a pecuniary penalty for the most heinous 
offences, which in fact gave complete impunity to those who 
could pay it, and left the poor at the mercy of the rich. The 
trial by battle was so popular that he did not venture to put 
an end to it bv any formal prohibition. But the trial by jury 
which he instituted was speedily seen to be a more reason¬ 
able way of deciding disputes, and gradually led to the 
disuse of the absurd test which made a man’s innocence 
depend upon his skill in arms and his bodily strength. He 





HENRY II. 


73 


IX.] 

divided the kingdom into six districts, the circuits of the 
present day, and appointed judges, who were annually to 
travel into each for the purpose of administering justice. 
And while engaged in this peaceful legislation he did not 
forget the defence of the country from foreign enemies; 
but, by strict enactments, made it the duty of every one 
possessed of any property whatever in the iand to be fur¬ 
nished with arms for the general service of the country, on 
the general prosperity of which his own individual happiness 
must depend. 

These beneficial reforms he was able to effect during eight 
years of peace. But in 1182 he was again disturbed by his 
son’s disobedience to himself, and by their quarrels with one 
another. Prince Henry, however, died the next year of a 
fever; and before his death he was seized with repentance 
for his undutiful conduct to his father, and sent to him, 
imploring him to visit and to forgive him. The king feared 
to trust himself in his hands, lest his illness and his re¬ 
pentance might both be feigned, but sent him his ring in 
token of his complete forgiveness. But when he heard that 
he was really dead he reproached himself bitterly for having 
refused his last request. Geoffrey also was killed soon 
afterwards, in a tournament at Paris. Bichard submitted; 
and the king was again at peace. But after four years, 
Philip Augustus, who had succeeded Louis on the throne of 
Prance, excited Bichard to fresh acts of violence, out of 
which he intended himself to raise a pretence for invading 
Henry’s territories ; and because Henry, warned by the evil 
effects that had ensued from allowing his eldest son to be 
crowned, refused now to sanction the coronation of Bichard 
in his lifetime, he openly revolted from him, and did homage 
to Philip for the Prench territories belonging to England; 
while Philip pretended to invest him at once with the posses¬ 
sion of them. The Church interfered in vain in this unholy 
quarrel. One legate excommunicated Bichard; another 
threatened Philip with an interdict: but both princes dis¬ 
regarded their sentences, and prosecuted operations against 
Henry with such vigour, that he was forced to purchase 
peace by consenting to very disadvantageous terms. This, 
however, was not the worst grief that fortune had in store 
for him. He had agreed fully to pardon those of his barons 
who had taken part with Bichard against him ; and when 
the list was presented to him he was struck to the heart by 


A.D. 

1154 — 

1189 . 


A.D. 

1154- 
1189. 


74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [oil. 

finding it headed with the name of John, his favourite son, 
who had conducted himself through these intrigues with 
such cunning and duplicity, that he had never suspected him 
of being one of the chief encouragers of the conspiracy 
which had caused him such trouble and humiliation. His 
distress of mind brought on a fever, of which he died on the 
6th of July, 1189, at Chinon, near Saumur, in the fifty-eighth 
year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign. 

His quarrel with Becket, and the resolution with which he 
enforced the subordination of the Church to the civil power, 
caused some of the monkish chroniclers to depict the cha¬ 
racter of this great king in unfavourable colours, in which 
they have been followed by a Roman Catholic historian of 
the present age, whose work enjoys a high reputation among 
those of his own religion 8 . But to those who consider the 
events of his reign without that almost personal animosity 
which so commonly influences the priests of the Church of 
Rome against all who dispute their arrogant pretensions, it 
will appear that he had almost every quality calculated to make 
a man amiable, or a sovereign admirable. He was valiant, but 
fond of peace ; an eager enforcer of justice without allow¬ 
ing it to degenerate into revenge ; possessed of power which 
might have made him formidable to Europe, had not his 
ambition been so well regulated that he was content to seek 
no other additions to his dominions but such as were mani¬ 
festly essential, or at least greatly conducive to their 
security; able to wield authority with a wisdom rarely 
equalled, yet never desirous to engross it to himself; a most 
affectionate parent, ever ready to forgive the gravest inju¬ 
ries, and, what is often harder still, the most wanton insults. 
As a lawgiver many of his regulations were so wise that thev 
have been preserved almost unaltered to the present day. 
He was as steady in his support as he w r as penetrating and 
judicious in his selection of his counsellors ; and if he was in 
some degree deceived in Becket, it may fairly be urged, that 
that prelate behaved with such consummate art before his 
elevation to the primacy, that suspicion itself could hardly 
have anticipated his subsequent actions ; and suspicion was, 
of all vices, the one most alien to Henry’s liberal and noble 
disposition. His dispute with the archbishop originated in 

8 But Moore himself, an historian and a Roman Catholic, but not a priest, 
admits that Lingard was too full of sectarian prejudice to be a good historian. 
—See his Life, vol. vii. p. 11. 


RICHARD I„ 


75 


x.] 

the adoption of a policy not only just and reasonable, but a.d. 
also most essential to the maintenance of the royal authority, 1154 ~ 
and the future peace of the nation ; and if in the conduct of 1189 ' 
it he yielded so for to his indignation at his subject’s insolent 
ingratitude, as to depart in some degree from both prudence 
and justice, his failure in that instance may be fairly set 
down as the only blemish in a long career, which, in its 
general tenor, was virtuous, wise, and productive of great 
and lasting benefit to his country. 


CHAPTER X. 

RICHARD I . 9 

Richard, whose rebellion against his father had been in 1189— 
some degree the cause of his death, was filled with the 1199. 
greatest remorse when that event took place, and gave the 
best proof that the repentance which he expressed was 
sincere, by discarding those advisers who had encouraged or 
prompted his disobedience, and receiving into his favour in 
their stead the faithful ministers of Henry, though they had 
been constant in blaming his conduct and opposing his 
designs. The opening of his reign was signalized by a dis¬ 
astrous outrage which marks the character and feeling of 
the times. On the day of his coronation, some Jews endea¬ 
voured to force their way into Westminster Abbey to 
behold the ceremony; in a scuffle which ensued between 
them and some of the other spectators, one or two of the 
Jews were severely maltreated, if not killed, and presently a 
rumour spread abroad that the king had ordered a general 
massacre of that people. The pretext for pillaging them, 
for their reputation for riches was already universal, was 
too tempting to be neglected, and the populace began to 
tear down their houses, and to murder every member of 
their nation whom they could meet. It was in vain that 
Richard sent some of his chief officers from the banquet to 

9 Contemporary with this prince was the great king of France, Philip II., 
surnamed Augustus. In later reigns, when the affairs of England became 
more connected with those of the Continent, lists will be given of the con¬ 
temporary sovereigns of the principal countries of Europe; but that course 
appears unnecessary till we arrive at the reign of Henry VIII. 




A.D. 

1189 - 

1199 


76 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

stop the riot, and he was forced to go forth and exert him¬ 
self to the uttermost before he could check the fury of the 
fanatical and greedy multitude. The example of London 
infected other towns wherever there were a sufficient num¬ 
ber of Jews to be an object of attack; and at York, where 
they dwelt in great numbers, they were assailed with such 
violence shortly after Bichard departed to the Holy Land, 
that they took refuge in the castle; and finding that they 
were unable to maintain that post, they came to a horrible 
resolution, imitated centuries afterwards by some of their 
brethren in Spain; they slew their wives and children, then 
collecting their most valuable property into a heap, they set 
fire to it and to their houses, and throwing themselves into 
the flames, they preferred perishing in that desperate man¬ 
ner to allowing their merciless persecutors to enrich them¬ 
selves with their plunder. 

The object nearest Bichard’s heart was to join in the 
third crusade, for which large preparations were being 
made in every country in Christendom. Saladin, a sove¬ 
reign of a most warlike disposition, and of the greatest 
abilities, had succeeded Noureddin as sultan about sixteen 
years before; and his reign had been marked by a series of 
victories over the Christians in Palestine, in which he had 
wrested from them Acre, Ascalon, and nearly every strong¬ 
hold that they possesced; and, two years before Henry’s 
death, he bad taken Jerusalem itself. On the news that 
the Holy Sepulchre had fallen again into the hands of the 
infidels, all Europe was inflamed with a fanaticism which 
even those who did not share it thought it politic to feign, 
and with a determination to recover it for the true believers. 
Philip Augustus had announced his resolution to lead his 
troops in person; and Bichard, who was probably not greatly 
influenced by religious considerations, but who saw in the 
enterprise an opportunity for acquiring military renown, 
which was his darling passion, determined to follow his 
example. His father had left him a large treasure, which 
he proceeded to augment by the most impolitic means, 
selling not only many of the revenues and estates belonging 
to the crown, but offices of trust and dignities of state, and 
even those to which the administration of justice belonged ; 
replying to the objections of one of his less enthusiastic 
ministers, by the assurance that he would sell London itself 
if he could find a purchaser. He actually did sell back to 


RICHARD I. 


77 


X.] 

the king of Scotland the fortresses of Roxburgh and Ber¬ 
wick, and released him from the obligation of doing homage 
for any thing more than the territories which he possessed 
in England. When he had completed his preparations, he 
appointed Hugh, bishop of Durham, and Lougchamp, bishop 
of Ely, guardians of the kingdom in his absence; enriched 
his brother John with such ample grants as he thought 
sufficient to satisfy even his grasping disposition, and to 
bind him by gratitude to his interests for the future, and 
departed for the Holy Land. At Easter, 1190, he joined 
Philip at Vezelay, on the borders of Burgundy, marched 
across Erance to Marseilles, and from thence he sailed along 
the coast to Messina, where he was joined by his fleet, which 
was to convey him and his army across the Mediterranean 
to the wished-for shores of the sacred Palestine. 

The kingdom of Sicily had lately been usurped by Tancred, 
a natural son of a former sovereign of the island, who kept 
Joan, the widow of the late king, and sister to Richard, in 
confinement at Palermo. Tancred, therefore, having reason 
to fear that Richard might be unfriendly to him, restored 
queen Joan to liberty, and offered one of his daughters in 
marriage to Richard’s nephew, Arthur, the infant duke of 
Brittany, but he could not altogether disarm Richard’s 
suspicions ; and as the jealousy of the sovereigns engendered 
ill will between their subjects, quarrels took place between 
the English and Sicilian soldiers, in one of which the 
English forced their way into Messina and began to pillage 
and slaughter the unoffending citizens. Richard hastened 
in person to the scene of disturbance, and prevented his 
troops from committing further outrages, but erected his 
standard on the walls as a token that the town was at his 
mercy. This nearly caused a quarrel between him and 
Philip, who considered Messina his own quarters, and de¬ 
manded in a menacing tone that the standard should be 
at once removed. Richard consented to take it down; but 
fresh causes of dispute arose between them. Tancred, 
whether truly or falsely it is impossible to say, revealed to 
Richard that Philip had instigated the Sicilians to attack 
the English; and Philip was offended at Richard’s refusing 
to marry his sister Alice, as it had been previously agreed 
between them that he should do. But Richard brought 
forward such convincing proofs of the princess’s misconduct, 
that it was impossible for Philip to insist on his adhering to 


A.D. 

1189 — 
1199. 


78 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. his engagement, though the humiliation which he must have 
118!)— f e lt a £ being forced to consent to his breaking it, added to 
the secret jealousy which he had begun to cherish against 
him. 

In fact there were many causes sufficient to create such 
a feeling in so ambitious a prince as Philip Augustus. 
The possessions of the king of England in France were 
nearly equal in extent, and superior in value and im¬ 
portance, to his own. And though Richard held them, or 
most of them, only as fiefs, and in respect of them acknow¬ 
ledged himself a vassal of the French crown, yet his sub¬ 
ordination was only nominal; the power that so many 
counties and principalities gave him was real and formidable. 
The lord of such ample territories might be a subject in the 
theory of the feudal system, but in effect he was a rival, 
whom his nominally subordinate position was likely to dis¬ 
pose the more to encroach on the authority and rights of 
his superior. The difference likewise that existed between 
the characters of the two allies did not tend to promote 
their cordiality. Philip was conscious of possessing talents 
far superior to those of Richard; and, in a time of peace, his 
far-sighted policy, and cautious but resolute wisdom, would 
have surely and easily established his pre-eminence ; but, in 
an expedition like that in which they w r ere at present en¬ 
gaged, the qualities in which Richard excelled, his great 
military skill, his lionlike valour, his almost superhuman 
prowess, and his princely liberality, displayed not only to his 
own countrymen, but to all who were engaged in the same 
enterprise with himself, threw the more cold-hearted de¬ 
liberation of Philip into the shade, winning even from the 
French an admiration which their own sovereign’s abilities 
in council and statesmanship were slower to extort. 

For the time, however, matters went on smoothly, and the 
French king consented to Richard’s marriage with Beren- 
garia of Navarre, of whom he had become enamoured in 
Guienne, and who now came to Sicily with queen Eleanor, 
to join her intended husband in his expedition. Early in 
the spring of 1191 the fleets of the two nations sailed from 
Sicily; stringent regulations were made to ensure order and 
harmony during the voyage; from one of which we may 
infer that gambling was already becoming fashionable, 
and that, even while engaged in so holy an expedition as 
the crusade, gamesters who lost their money were liable 


RICHARD I. 



79 


also to lose their tempers ; for the soldiers of inferior rank 
were forbidden to play for money at any game whatever; 
knights and barons, bishops and archbishops, were limited to 
a loss which should never exceed tenpence a day; and the kings 
themselves were the only persons who might play without any 
other limitation of their stake than their own discretion. The 
English fleet had not a prosperous voyage ; a storm over¬ 
took the leading ships, drove several on shore at Cyprus, and 
compelled others to seek a refuge in the principal har¬ 
bour of that island. Isaac, the king, plundered the wrecks, 
and refused the vessels which were still safe, though 
damaged, permission either to enter his port or to land their 
passengers. One of these vessels bore Berengaria and the 
dowager queen of Sicily, and when Bichard arrived the next 
day, he was excited to fury by such an insult to his relations, 
attacked Isaac, stormed his chief town, took him prisoner, 
and loaded him with silver fetters as an ironical compliment 
to his royal dignity ; nor did he release him till he consented 
to join in the crusade, to pay a large sum of money, and 
to surrender some of his principal fortresses as a security 
for his loyalty during the continuance of the Holy War. 
While at Cyprus his marriage with Berengaria was solem¬ 
nized, and she was formally crowned queen of England. 

In the mean time a fresh difference had arisen between 
Bichard and Philip ; Guy de Lusignan, who had been king of 
Jerusalem till Saladin drove him from that city, had enjoyed 
his kingdom by virtue of his marriage with Sibylla, the de¬ 
scendant and heiress of Godfrey de Bouillon ; but Sibylla had 
died without issue, and Conrad, marquis of Montserrat, who 
had married her younger sister Isabella, now claimed the title 
of king of Jerusalem, as having devolved on his wife by the 
death of her sister. The fact of Bichard assuming the pro¬ 
tection of Guy was sufficient to decide Philip to embrace 
the cause of Conrad; the other nations which made up the 
crusaders’ host took different sides, and their operations 
were seriously impeded by the divisions which this compe¬ 
tition for a lost dignity and an empty title caused in the 
camp. 

When Bichard landed in Palestine he found the Chris¬ 
tians under Conrad engaged in the siege of Acre, which was 
then, as it has so often done since, offering a desperate 
resistance. His arrival soon changed the aspect of affairs. 
Eor nearly seven hundred years have his exploits been the 


AD. 

1180— 
1180. 


A.C. 

1189- 

1199. 


80 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

theme of romances, the inspiration of minstrels; but neither 
romance nor minstrelsy has ever done more than justice to 
the mighty strength of that invincible arm which dashed in 
the gates of cities with the battle-axe; to the dauntless 
heroism which revelled in danger, which it seemed to court 
for its own sake ; or to the still higher moral quality of manly 
fortitude-which bore the triumphs of the enemy, and, harder 
still, the desertion of allies with unshrinking patience. His 
very enemies, barbarians and infidels though they were, gazed 
with admiration on the great hero of Christendom; and, 
ages afterwards, the Saracen mother would quiet her wail¬ 
ing child with his name; the Saracen warrior would marvel 
what could frighten his horse, when he could no longer see 
the lion-monarch of England I0 . 

Acre soon fell; and Philip, impatient of being eclipsed by 
the renown of his ally, seized the pretext of political neces¬ 
sities requiring his presence in his own country, to abandon 
the expedition. He left, however, 10,000 chosen troops, 
with the duke of Burgundy at their head, under Richard’s 
command ; and took a voluntary oath to engage in no hos¬ 
tilities against his dominions during his absence. Eor a 
time Richard proceeded in the career of victory. Though 
very inferior in numbers, he gave Saladin the greatest defeat 
in the open plain that he had ever experienced. He took 
Ascalon, and advanced within sight of Jerusalem : but the 
weather became tempestuous, the rains and a scarcity of 
provisions, which began to be felt in his camp, prevented his 
making further progress, and he was compelled to retire to 
the coast, displaying in his retreat the most marvellous 
valour, and a consummate military skill of which he was not 
so generally supposed to be possessed. 

'While thus occupied in acquiring renown abroad, he re¬ 
ceived news from home which showed him that his presence 
was urgently required in his own kingdom. The insolence 
of Longchamp had caused universal discontent, of which the 
ungrateful John had endeavoured to take advantage; and 
when his endeavours to grasp the supreme power in England 
failed, he crossed the seas to stimulate Philip to invade his bro¬ 
ther’s continental dominions. Philip was sufficiently inclined 
to comply with such a suggestion ; indeed, it is said that, even 

10 Gibbon, I think, it is who relates that a common expostulation of an Arab 
to a sluing horse was, “ What are you afraid of? one would think you saw king 
Richard.” 


RICHARD I. 


81 


X.] 

before be arrived in France, he had requested of the pope a 
release from the oath which he had taken, of doing nothing 
to the injury of Bichard during his absence: and now, by 
advancing against him a charge of being privy to the death 
of Conrad of Montserrat, who, for some personal quarrel, 
had been murdered by the emissaries of the king of the 
assassins, he sought to justify his attempt to deprive him of 
his French territories. -But the pope threatened him with 
ecclesiastical censures, and his barons refused to serve him 
against the universally reverenced champion of the cross ; so 
that he was compelled to abandon the design. But the in¬ 
telligence which he had received of his and his brother’s 
intrigues alarmed Bichard, and, having concluded a truce on 
favourable terms with Saladin, in the autumn of 1192, he set 
sail for England. 

He was again unfortunate in his weather. His fleet was 
scattered in a storm, and the vessel in which he himself 
sailed was driven ashore in the Adriatic. He determined to 
proceed overland. He was too well assured of Philip’s 
enmity to travel through France. He had also given offence 
to Leopold, duke of Austria, a worthless prince, who for a 
time had borne a part in the crusade, so that he did not 
venture to travel in his own character, but disguised himself 
as a pilgrim merchant, and so proceeded on his journey. 
He reached the Danube in safety ; but in a small town 
near Vienna the imprudence of his servant betrayed him. 
Leopold arrested him, threw him into confinement, and, that 
nothing might be wanting to complete the infamy of the 
transaction, sold him three months afterwards to Henry, the 
emperor of Germany. In all Europe there were but two 
persons who were not struck with horror at the atrocity and 
impiety of kidnapping and imprisoning the great king, who 
had done such mighty deeds for the glory of Europe and of 
Christianity: but Philip, his ancient friend and his late 
ally, and John, the brother whom he had loaded with 
benefits, were those two. Philip entreated the emperor to 
keep him in perpetual captivity, or else to deliver him up to 
himself; and, without waiting for his reply, took instant 
advantage of Bichard’s situation to seize many of his 
strongest towns on the Continent: and John, spreading a 
false report of his death, endeavoured to get himself acknow¬ 
ledged as his successor, and seized one or two castles in the 
hope of being enabled to make good his claim. But Bichard’s 


A. D. 

1189—^ 
1191). 







A.D. 

11K9- 

1191). 


82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

ministers were too loyal to their trust to betray their master’s 
interests to any one, much less to one so generally hated 
and despised; and John found it prudent to retire to 
France. Meanwhile, Henry treated the king with every 
kind of indignity, confined him in a dungeon, loaded him 
with fetters, and at last brought him before the diet at 
Hagenau, accusing him of all kinds of crimes. Bichard, 
though the tribunal was manifestly incompetent, conde¬ 
scended to reply to the charges, and made so triumphant a 
defence, that this action of the emperor, instead of justifying 
his conduct, only made its atrocity and injustice more uni¬ 
versally notorious. In addition to the shame, which even 
he could not help feeling, the pope threatened him with ex- 
communication if he did not release him ; and he agreed to 
ransom him for 100,000 marks. His own inclinations would 
have led him to add to his infamy, for John and Philip in¬ 
stantly offered him a much larger sum to break his agree¬ 
ment, and he would have done so without compunction, if 
the remonstrances of the German princes had not compelled 
him to adhere to it. Seventy thousand marks were paid, 
hostages were given for the remainder, and in March, 1194, 
Bichard arrived in England, where he was received with de¬ 
light by his subjects, who had shown their anxiety in his 
behalf by the eagerness with w r hich they contributed the 
money for his ransom. 

During his lengthened absence England had suffered many 
evils which a wise statesman would have applied himself to 
remedy. Unluckily Bichard’s first and only thought was 
how to take speedy and severe vengeance on his enemies, 
and he could only do so by adding to those evils. On 
hearing of his release Philip had sent John instant in¬ 
formation of it in a note containing only the brief hint, 
“ Take care of yourself; the devil is unchained.” To pro¬ 
cure John’s condemnation as a traitor, and the confiscation 
of his estates, was easy; but Philip could only be- chas¬ 
tised by war. Money was requisite for war, and* money he 
proceeded to raise by the most unjustifiable expedients* and 
the most oppressive exactions. He had not been home two 
months when he invaded France. The news of his prepara¬ 
tions terrified John, who prevailed on their mother Eleanor 
to intercede with Bichard in his behalf. Bichard, who has 
often been compared to Achilles, was as passionate as that 
ancient hero, but not as implacable. He pardoned him ; 


RICHARD I. 


83 


X.] 

but his words showed his sense of the levity and worthless¬ 
ness of his character. “ I forgive him,” said he, “ and hope 
I may as easily forget his offences as he will my pardon.” 
The war in France was of a petty and uninteresting cha¬ 
racter ; the most important battle which took place was a 
cavalry skirmish near Grisors, in which, as both the monarchs 
were personally engaged, the event was not long doubtful. 
The French proved as unable as the Saracens had been to 
withstand the furious onset and mighty prowess of Richard. 
Half their army was taken, and Philip himself was only saved 
from that fate with great difficulty. Another skirmish has 
become celebrated from being the cause of the capture of the 
bishop of Beauvais, not in his sacred vestments, but in the 
complete panoply of a knight. He had been the ambassador 
at the court of Germany, who had so earnestly pressed upon 
Henry the acceptance of Philip’s shameful offer; and Richard 
resolved to make him feel, in his own person, the hardships 
which he had been so desirous to continue to himself. He 
loaded him with chains, and threw him into a dungeon at 
Rouen. The pope besought the king to pity “ his dear son,” 
and received in reply the bishop’s coat of armour, with the 
text attached to it, “ This have we found : know now whether 
it be thy son’s Coat or not.” The pope confessed that it was 
the coat of a son of Mars, and that the bishop must trust 
to Mars to deliver him. But Richard had the greater 
influence with the god of war, and the bishop lay in his 
dungeon till the king himself descended to the grave. 

The impoverished state of both kingdoms from the vast 
expenses of the crusade compelled them to make peace. 
Their animosity impelled them to break it, and to renew 
the war, which, though protracted, produced no event of 
importance, or of interest. Richard’s military skill gained 
him some trifling advantages, but Philip’s policy prevented 
him from deriving any real benefit from them. After three 
or four years of futile warfare the mediation of the pope 
seemed likely to bring about a peace between them, when 
Richard, in attacking the castle of one of his barons, who 
refused to surrender to him a treasure which he had found, 
and which he claimed as the superior lord, was wounded 
by an arrow in the shoulder; and the wound, though 
trifling in its own nature, was rendered mortal by the un¬ 
skilfulness of the surgeons. The archer who had inflicted 
the wound was taken prisoner, and brought before Richard, 

a 2 


A.D. 

11 M— 



84 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. triumphing in having slain the enemy who had hilled his 
|jjj® 1 father and his brothers; and the dying king showed his 

1 magnanimity by ordering him to be released, with a present 
of money; but Marcadee, the leader ol his mercenaries, 
flayed the poor wretch alive, without his knowledge. 
Richard died on the 6th of April, 1199, in the tenth year 
of his reign, and the forty-second of his age. He had 
formerly appointed his nephew Arthur his heir; but being 
offended with his mother Constance, he had recalled that 
nomination, and on his deathbed he declared John his suc¬ 
cessor, and bequeathed to him the greater jpart of his treasures. 

As a warrior, in an age when princes and nobles thought 
of scarcely any thing but war, Richard towers not only 
above his contemporaries, but above all the chiefs of many 
preceding and succeeding generations; and, that nothing 
might be wanting to his character as a perfect knight, he 
cultivated the softer accomplishments of music and min¬ 
strelsy with such success as to rival the reputation of many 
professional troubadours. The historian is compelled un¬ 
willingly to abandon the tale of his faithful Blondel wan¬ 
dering over Europe in search of the place of his captivity, 
. and discovering it by singing under the window's of his 
dungeon a lay which the captive monarch had often loved 
to hear, and to which he replied on his lyre, his only solace 
in his tedious imprisonment; but of the merit of appre¬ 
ciating the art, and rewarding it with princely liberality, 
he ought not to deprive him by his silence. As a king 
he left to posterity one or two enactments of wisdom and 
humanity, establishing an uniformity of weights and mea¬ 
sures throughout the kingdom, and mitigating the severity 
of the law wdiich confiscated the property of all shipwrecked 
persons for the benefit of the crow r n. He has been called 
cruel; but, though like too many warriors he was in¬ 
different to human suffering, he does not appear to have 
been wantonly inhuman ; and though easily offended, and 
easily moved to severe revenge when exasperated, his treat¬ 
ment of his brother John showed that he had a great 
portion of the kingly virtue of placability. Though so 
great a soldier he was not a conqueror, nor was his reign 
happy or beneficial to his subjects; exposed to anarchy in 
his absence, and, when he was at home, ground dowm by 
exactions to support him in the wars which he was inces¬ 
santly waging or meditating. 


XI.] 


JOHN. 


85 


CHAPTER XI. 

JOHN. 

The two Williams had made tyranny formidable; the two 
Henrys had rendered it respectable; but John seemed to 
be raised to power to show that it could be at once dreadful, 
odious, and contemptible. Destitute of even the lowest of 
good qualities, personal courage, the want of which seems 
stranger in an age of universal warfare and general ferocity 
than even in our own, there was no vice that can disgrace 
humanity that he had not in excess. Grasping, though 
ungrateful; boastful, but too cowardly to attempt to per¬ 
form his boasts; revengeful against all who had injured or 
resisted him; cruel towards all from whom he apprehended 
resistance ; abject before the powerful, violent to the weak; 
dissolute and ljcentious, without that cheerful disposition 
or gaiety of manner which too often makes profligacy at¬ 
tractive, and which in more than one of his successors has 
gained toleration, or one might almost say favours, from his 
own age, if not from posterity; impious, yet superstitious, 
he was an object of dread to women, of hatred to his coun¬ 
trymen and subjects, of loathing and contempt to all who 
were not by their situation exposed to his power. His 
infamy was rendered the more conspicuous by his having 
Philip for his contemporary on the throne of Prance,—a 
prince, who, as we have already seen, was ambitious, un¬ 
scrupulous, and shameless, but who for vigour and states¬ 
manlike ability has had few equals in the long line of Prench 
sovereigns. 

John succeeded without opposition to all Richard’s pos¬ 
sessions except Brittany, which belonged by right to his 
nephew Arthur, a boy of only twelve years of age. Philip, 
whose main object was to reunite to the crown of Prance 
the great fiefs which marriage or inheritance had annexed 
to the English one, attempted to seize that duchy, but 
expecting greater advantages from conciliating John, he 
preferred compelling the young prince to do homage for it 


A.D. 

1199 — 
1216. 


86 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1199 — 

1216 . 


to liis uncle, receiving from John as a reward the promise 
of being declared heir of all his continental dominions in 
the event of his dying without issue. But John soon 
offended his barons by divorcing his w r ife, the daughter of 
the earl of Gloucester, and prevailing on the count of 
Angouleme to give him his daughter Isabella, though she 
had been already betrothed to the count de la Marche. The 
barons united to avenge the w 7 rongs of their brother baron; 
and Philip, eager to take every opportunity of diminishing 
John’s power, encouraged the youthful Arthur, now r sixteen 
years of age, to assert his independence, married him to 
his daughter Mary, though she was barely five years old, 
and furnished him with an army to support his claims. 
Arthur took the town of Mirabeau, and was menacing the 
castle into which Eleanor, the queen dowager, had thrown 
herself, when John, bracing up his nerves to fight a boy, 
undertook the only military expedition in which he ever 
succeeded, hastened at the head of a large force to relieve 
his mother, and in a skirmish at the gates took Arthur 
prisoner. The fate of the young prince has never been 
actually cleared up; but John’s silence under the imputa¬ 
tion may be almost taken as a proof of the correctness of 
the common report, which told that the unnatural monarch 
murdered him with his own hands, and threw him into 
the Seine. The report spread instantly over the province. 
The Bretons appealed to Philip to revenge the murder of 
their duke. He received their appeal, so favourable to his 
own projects, with delight; summoned John as a vassal of 
the Erench crowm to clear himself of the charge of murder 
before his peers, and on his refusal, pronounced him guilty, 
as a felon and a traitor, and adjudged him to have forfeited 
all the lands of which he was possessed in the French 
territory. He lost no time in executing the sentence, but 
invaded the different states thus pronounced forfeited with 
a powerful army. Fortress and city fell in rapid succession. 
John affected to laugh at the progress of the enemy, boast¬ 
ing that when the time came for him to exert himself he 
would retake more in a day than they took in a year; but 
to a coward the time for exertion never does come ; and in 
the short space of three years he lost nearly the wdiole of 
his continental dominions without striking one blow in their 
defence. 

While becoming thus dishonoured abroad he became, 


JOHN. 


87 


XI.] 

entangled in still greater difficulties at home from a dispute 
concerning the appointment of a new primate. In no action 
of his life does he appear to have acted with equal prudence 
and moderation to that which he displayed in the first steps 
he took to secure the appointment of his nominee, the 
bishop of Norwich, in preference to Langton, the object of 
the selection of the pope ; yet even here his prudence was 
manifestly the result of timidity, as he abandoned the right 
exercised by all his predecessors, and was content to in¬ 
timate his wishes privately to the canons, who were the 
nominal electors, instead of issuing the mandate that pre¬ 
cedent authorized. And when he found that Innocent the 
Third, an ambitious and able pontiff, had compelled the 
monks, who had been sent to Eome as a deputation to 
treat on the matter, to give up the bishop of Norwich, and 
to elect Langton in his stead in spite of their oaths, and 
that Innocent had proceeded to consecrate him at Yiterbo, 
the injustice of his conduct in wreaking his vengeance on 
the monks who remained behind, so little resembled the 
effects of righteous indignation or real courage, that Inno¬ 
cent, who, even if he had not known his character before, 
might hav£ divined his want of firmness and resolution from 
his precipitation and violence, took the audacious step of 
laying the kingdom under an interdict to enforce his sub¬ 
mission ; two years afterwards proceeded to a personal 
excommunication of him; in 1212 issued a sentence by 
which he absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and 
the next year promulgated a further sentence, deposing him 
from his rank, and giving his kingdom to Philip, who, 
though he had himself in time past smarted from the effects 
of papal insolence, and had learnt by personal experience 
the encroaching character of papal usurpation, was now 
seduced by an ambitious desire to become master of Eng¬ 
land, to sanction the most preposterous usurpation of all, 
and to admit, in its fullest extent, the claim of the 
Church of Eome to be looked upon as endued with au¬ 
thority over all Christian princes, and as entitled to dis¬ 
pose of their kingdoms at her sovereign and unquestioned 
pleasure. 

At the first moment John made some little show of spirit 
and vigour; prohibiting the clergy from reading the various 
sentences in the churches, and declaring all those who 
obeyed them guilty of treason, and confiscating their estates 


A.D. 

1199— 

1216. 



A.D. 

1 1U9— 
1216. 


1213. 


88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

as traitors. He even showed such a practical disregard of 
these sentences himself, that he levied a numerous army, 
with which he marched to the north to bring the king of 
Scotland, with whom he had some dispute, the nature of 
which is not certainly known, to submission, and compelled 
William to pay a large sum of money, and to renew his 
homage for his kingdom. During his father’s reign he had 
been sent to Ireland to complete its conquest, but he had 
only alienated the chieftains of that country by his inca¬ 
pacity and insolence; but now he crossed the sea to that 
island a second time, received the williug homage of some 
of the nobles, reduced others who were more refractory to 
submission, and made some advantageous regulations for 
the government of the province, dividing it into counties, 
and establishing the English coinage and the English laws. 
Returning to England, he checked the Welsh who had been 
ravaging the frontier with their customary incursions, and 
compelled Llewellyn, the prince of that country, to give 
hostages for the future pacific conduct of his subjects, whom 
it was found the next year that no treaties could restrain, 
and the wretched hostages were hanged in revenge for fresh 
inroads of their countrymen. 

Unhappily he was incapable of long carrying on a dispute, 
or indeed of long behaving in any matter with dignity or 
steadiness; an able and firm prince might have very probably 
united the sovereigns of Europe in opposition to the mon¬ 
strous claims of the pope, from which they had most of 
them suffered in their turn, for Innocent, at the beginning 
of his reign, had laid Erance under an interdict, and had 
recently excommunicated Otho, the emperor of Germany; 
but no one could expect either credit, safety, or additional 
strength from an alliance with John ; and the consequence 
was that even those, who ought properly to have considered 
liis cause their own, sided with the pope against him, for¬ 
getting that in so doing they were siding with him also 
against themselves. Cowed at last by the steady arrogance 
of Innocent, John made the first overtures towards a recon¬ 
ciliation, offering the most humiliating submission; but the 
pope rose in his demands as the king’s terror increased, till 
at last John actually consented to resign his kingdom into 
the hands of Pandulf, the papal legate, and to receive it 
again from him to be held for the future as a fief of the 
Roman see, for which he and his successors were to be 


XI.] JOHN. 89 

bound to pay a heavy sum annually to their liege lord, the 
pope. 

It was difficult for any action to be more base than such 
a submission ; but John contrived to find a lower depth of 
baseness still in the aid which he sought to deliver Mm 
from its consequences. From the threatened invasion of 
Philip it did indeed save him, since the pope now took England 
under his protection as having become part of the patri- 
monv of St. Peter, and commanded him to desist from his 
meditated enterprise ; a mandate which Philip, whose barons 
were unwilling to be disappointed of the rich booty which 
they anticipated, would probably have disobeyed, had not 
lord Salisbury given it additional force by burning his fleet 
in the French harbours; but it did not secure him the 
obedience of his barons, exasperated by his tyranny, from 
which neither their property nor their lives were safe by 
his licentiousness, which respected not the honour of their 
nearest relatives, trampling alike on the highest rank and 
the most spotless reputation ; and, as their discontent seemed 
likely to break into open rebellion, against which no Chris¬ 
tian potentate would aid him, he turned to the infidels, and 
sent an embassy to Mohammed, the victorious emir of 
Spain, offering, as the price of the assistance which he 
solicited, to hold "his kingdom of him as his liege lord, to 
pay him tribute, and to forsake Christianity for Islamism. 
The largeness of such offers raised suspicion in the mind of 
the prudent Saracen, and finding the notions, which he con¬ 
ceived from them of the value of his proffered convert, con¬ 
firmed by the replies of the ambassadors to his questions, 
he dismissed them civilly without accepting any of their 
offers, or granting them the succour for which their master 
was so anxious. 

Weak as he was, he provoked the further enmity of Philip 
by invading France, advancing as far as the city of Angers, 
and his further contempt by the pusillanimity with which 
he fled, without striking a blow, at the approach of Louis, 
the French king’s son. His foreign mercenaries he led 
back to England, where he began to attack the castles of 
those nobles whom he thought unfriendly to him, burning 
and pillaging in every direction as if he were in an enemy’s 
country. His English troops he left behind, under the 
command of the earl of Salisbury, to join the emperor 
Otho in the campaign which was terminated by the great 


A.D. 

1199— 

121G. 


90 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. battle of Bovines, which established the power of Philip, 

121G anc ^ P ut an enc ^ a ^ J°^ u ’ s h°P es °f a id from the Con- 
tinent. Salisbury himself was taken prisoner by the bishop 
of Beauvais, who, having been released by John for a heavy 
ransom, had not learnt from his captivity to cherish a less 
warlike disposition, but who now bore a huge club as his 
only offensive weapon, that he might not sully the purity 
of his episcopal character by acts of such positive bloodshed 
as he might have been led into committing if armed, as of 
old, with sword and spear. 

He had now no resource against the indignation of his 
barons, which gained great strength from the accession of 
archbishop Langton to their cause, who had shown his dis¬ 
position when absolving John from the pope’s sentence, by 
making it one of the conditions of his absolution that he 
should promise to redress the grievances of the people, and 
who now, on joining the party of the nobles, speedily as¬ 
sumed that lead in it which learning and abilities (which in 
him were very conspicuous) commonly gave the clergy over 
the unlettered nobles of that age. Henry the Pirst had 
granted his subjects a charter remedying many evils that 
had been previously complained of, and granting or confirm¬ 
ing to them many valuable privileges, and copies of it had 
been deposited in the principal abbeys of the kingdom : one 
of these copies Langton now produced, and exhorted the 
barons, whom their wrongs had united in a firm confe¬ 
deracy, to make that and the laws of Edward the Confessor 
(which, though probably little understood, were still re¬ 
garded with general veneration, especially by the English 
part of the population) the basis of their demands. They 
unanimously adopted his advice, and committed themselves 
to his guidance ; John refused compliance, shuffled, tried to 
separate the interests of the clergy from those of the laity 
by granting them a separate charter, then implored the 
interference of the pope, who was not inclined to see a body 
of fearless and haughty nobles lords of England in the place 
of an abject and submissive king, but whose letters and 
injunctions of moderation they could afford to disregard 
while they had the primate of England for their champion 
and leader against both king and pope. As peaceful expos¬ 
tulation and entreaty had no effect upon a sovereign, who, 
judging of others from himself, looked upon moderation as a 
proof of fear, they assembled in arms, and waged open w r ar 


JOHN. 


91 


XI.] 

against him : they seized Bedford, and were gladly received 
by the citizens of London, till John, whose retinue was at 
last reduced to seven knights, was terrified into submission, 
and, on the 15th of June, 1215, on the plains of Bunnimede, 
rendered for ever memorable by that event, he gave his 
assent to the Great Charter, usually know T n among us by its 
Latin title of Magna Charta, which in spite of th^lapse of time, 
the change of manners, and the larger view T s of policy which 
the advance of civilization has introduced, still remains the 
keystone of English liberty, the grand outline of the English 
constitution, which subsequent laws have done little more 
than fill up and explain. It would be out of place here to 
give the enactments of this famous statute ; some had re¬ 
ference to the peculiar circumstances of the time, some 
were directed to unimportant details; but the great clauses 
which secured all freemen from arbitrary imprisonment and 
from arbitrary spoliation, which ensured the purity and the 
promptitude of justice, and w T hich forbade, except under cir¬ 
cumstances carefully limited, the exaction of money from 
the subject without the consent of the general council of 
the kingdom, are still considered by men of all parties as the 
embodied assertion of their most cherished and most essen¬ 
tial rights. Eoqr hundred years afterwards the violation of 
the first and last of them shook the kingdom to its founda¬ 
tions, and brought a monarch, not without many virtuous 
and kingly qualities, to the scaffold. Half a century later 
the disregard of the first and second drove that monarch’s 
son from the throne, and the Great Charter received its 
final confirmation in the Bill of Bights. 

Past experience had not yet taught John the value of 
honesty or the futility of resistance to the wishes of an united 
nation. He had no sooner sworn to the observance of the 
charter, than he began to devise measures to enable him 
to violate it with safety. He sent agents abroad to hire 
mercenary troops, and procured from Innocent, almost as 
shameless as himself, an absolution from his oath, and a 
general sentence of excommunication against all his subjects 
who should dare to claim his adherence to it. This ini¬ 
quitous sentence the primate refused to publish, and the 
clergy agreed in disregarding altogether. But the barons, 
who had trusted too much to John’s helpless condition, had 
disbanded their forces, and were placed in considerable 
danger by the arrival of his foreign troops, which he divided 


A.D. 

1199— 

1216. 



92 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. into two armies, taking the command of one himself, and 
1190 — giving the other to Salisbury; and the two ravaged the 
whole kingdom, committing castles, towns, and peaceful 
villages alike to the flames, and perpetrating every descrip¬ 
tion of cruelty on the wretched inhabitants. Never, since 
the revengeful Conqueror devastated Northumberland, had 
such cruelties been beheld in England as were now per¬ 
petrated by its king on the subjects, to protect whose 
rights he had so recently and so solemnly sworn. In 
this universal misery the barons applied to Louis, the heir 
of the king of France, for aid, offering to acknowledge him 
for their king, and justifying their selection of him by the 
circumstance that his wife, Blanche of Castile, was the 
granddaughter of their former honoured sovereign, the 
secoud Henry. 

Innocent again threatened Philip with excommunication 
if he permitted any invasion of the territories of a prince 
under his protection, but his menace was despised, and Louis 
was sent to England with a sufficient army. Many of the 
strongest places in the kingdom speedily opened their gates to 
him ; but, as soon as they had time to recover from their first 
despair, the barons began to doubt whether they had done 
well to subject themselves and their country to a foreign 
yoke, and this feeling was strengthened by the impolitic 
conduct of Louis himself, who showed an almost exclusive 
attachment to his countrymen; and whom, from some dis¬ 
closures that had been made to them, they began to suspect 
of intending to confiscate their estates and dignities in order 
to enrich foreigners, of whom the very fact of their requiring 
their assistance created a jealousy in their breasts. Many 
of them, in consequence, deserted Louis, and returned to 
their allegiance to John, who was on his return towards the 
south, resolved, if his courage did not fail him, before the 
time of action, to fight one battle for his crown. Descend¬ 
ing from Lincolnshire and proceeding along the coast, he 
lost a long train of carriages containing most of his treasure 
and ensigns of royalty in the sea, which at high water over¬ 
flowed part of the road along which he was journeying. 
The vexation, or, according to others, an immoderate feast 
of peaches and ale, threw him into a fever. He w r as re¬ 
moved by easy stages to Newark, where, on the 17th of 
October, he died, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the 
eighteenth of his reign. 



JOHN. 


93 


XT.] 

No tyrant was ever so detested as John, but cowardice 
and baseness of every kind were, in him, so equally mingled 
with cruelty and licentiousness, that be was as much despised 
as he was detested. -Yet infamous as was his character, 
and inglorious as was his reign, it cannot but be regarded as 
fortunate for England that he was what he was. So con¬ 
siderable were the continental territories to which he suc¬ 
ceeded ; so weak, in every thing but the character of its 
sovereign, was the Erench monarchy, that if he had been a 
valiant and an able ruler, directing the efforts of a united 
people with the sagacious ambition that inspired most of 
his predecessors, he would have acquired such an ascendancy 
that probably the whole of France would have gradually 
been absorbed in his more extensive power ; and the inevit¬ 
able consequence would have been, that England, though 
the conquering country, would have become a province of 
the larger and richer kingdom which her sovereign had sub¬ 
dued. Already she was but too much looked upon in that 
light by the king and by the nobles. Richard, who in his 
distant wars had proved the valour of his English troops, 
and in his captivity had learnt to appreciate the loyal fidelity 
of the peaceful portion of his subjects, and who regarded 
them with greater favour and treated them with greater 
indulgence than any of his predecessors, yet often showed 
that he considered our island only an appendage to his conti¬ 
nental dominions, valuable chiefly for its revenue which 
enabled him to maintain his foreign wars. And the more 
ample the king’s foreign dominions became, the more surely 
would that view have been confirmed. But John lost all 
his territories in the north of France, and, with his loss of 
dominion, his nobles lost their estates. They had, the 
greater part of them at least, no property left out of Eng¬ 
land, and from henceforth they were compelled to consider 
that their country, and to seek that safety and prosperity 
in the affections of the natives which they had hitherto 
been contented to rest upon their fears. 

The temporary union of England with the Continent had 
been of great service to it, by quickening the civilization, 
refining the manners of the people, and giving them a wider 
acquaintance with mankind, and more extended view’s of 
policy. Its separation was now equally beneficial, by 
making it, for the first time, a really independent kingdom, 
deprived of foreign support, disentangled from foreign in- 


A.D. 

1199— 

1216. 



94 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1109 — 
1216. 


terests, free from foreign dictation, and forced to rely on the 
energies and virtues of its own people for its future gran¬ 
deur and its future happiness. 


CHAPTER XII. 

* 

HENRY III. 

1216— John had left two sons, Henry and Richard; and Henry, 

1274. w p 0 was j us t n i ne years old, succeeded to the throne with 
the unanimous consent of all the barons, except those who 
still adhered to prince Louis; and before the end of the 
month in which his father died he was crowned at Gloucester 
by the papal legate Gualo. As he was so young it was 
necessary to appoint a regent; and Hubert de Burgh, the 
chief justiciary, was the person naturally pointed out by 
his situation for that charge; but as he was at the time 
closely besieged in Hover by Louis, it would have been 
impossible for him to have discharged its duties; and, 
therefore, the barons, who proclaimed Henry king, at the 
same time appointed the most illustrious member of their 
body, the earl of Pembroke, guardian of the king, and 
governor of the kingdom. 

Some of the barons still adhered to Louis, who, being 
at the head of a powerful army, showed no inclination to 
relinquish his hold upon the kingdom, but who, by his im¬ 
politic preference of his own countrymen, and appointment of 
them to every place of trust at his disposal, was rapidly alienat¬ 
ing even those who had been most earnest in inviting, and 
• most forward in supporting him ; and Pembroke, with great 
judgment, took from them their last excuse for not coming 
over to their rightful king by causing Henry to confirm 
the Great Charter. It received a few slight modifications, 
some of which appear to us calculated to increase the royal 
prerogative in the most objectionable direction; but it* is 
clear that they were not viewed in that light by those who 
proposed or consented to them at the time, while others 
were important additions to the comfort and security of 
the people. So much importance was attached to it, that 
in the first nine years of this reign it received a solemn 
ratification from the king no less than three times; and it 



HENRY III. 


95 


xir.] 

lias never been exposed to any substantial alterations since 
the last of these occasions. 

This wise measure had the effect which Pembroke ex¬ 
pected, and greatly strengthened the king’s party. Louis 
himself was occupied with the siege of Dover. But Pem¬ 
broke turned his attention first to the north, where the 
Drench commander, the count de la Perche, was threaten¬ 
ing Lincoln Castle. In a battle, which took place under 
the walls of the city, the count was slain, and his army com¬ 
pletely routed; and almost at the same time a powerful 
fleet, which was on its way from Prance with reinforce¬ 
ments, was met by Philip d’Albiney, whose name deserves 
especial record as the first of that long line of invincible 
admirals, whose achievements have secured to England the 
undisputed mastery of the sea. D’Albiney’s ships were in 
number equal to only one-half of the French fleet; but, when 
by his seamanship he had gained the windward of the enemy, 
he is said to have blinded them by throwing clouds of quicklime 
into the air, which the breeze bore into their faces. The 
French fleet was defeated, and in shattered array bore the 
succour, so anxiously expected by their prince in Kent, 
back to the French harbours. . These two disasters deprived 
Louis of all hope of being able to preserve his footing in 
the kingdom, and he was glad to agree to a peace, by which 
pardon was secured to his English partisans, and he and 
his army were allowed to retire unmolested to their own 
country. 

No period in English history is more uninteresting than 
this reign. The establishment of peace abroad did not 
incline the barons to abate their turbulence at home. Un¬ 
happily Pembroke soon died, and he was succeeded as 
guardian of the kingdom by Hubert de Burgh, and the 
bishop of Winchester. De Burgh was not unequal to 
Pembroke in virtue and ability, and speedily obtained com¬ 
plete influence over Henry; but he was less popular with 
the barons, who from their triumph over John had learnt 
their own power, and who fancied that they saw in some of 
his measures a desire to extend the royal prerogative at 
their expense. His influence over his master was simply 
that naturally acquired bv a strong mind over a weak one, 
strengthened in this instance by the great services which, 
as Henry was well aware, he had rendered to the monarchy, 
and to the nation at large; but his enemies accused him of 


A.D. 

1216 — 

1274. 



A.D. 

121G— 
1274. 
1231. 


1236. 


96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

having gained the king’s affections by enchantment, and 
procured his removal from his office. 

The bishop of Winchester, who now enjoyed the undi¬ 
vided power, unluckily gave the nobles better-founded 
pretexts for their discontent by the preference for foreigners 
which he instilled into the king’s mind. He was himself 
a native of Poitou, and now invited over numbers of his 
countrymen, on whom he bestowed all the most lucrative 
offices and posts of command in the kingdom. The Great 
Charter had rendered the king more dependent on his people 
than he had been previously by stripping him of many 
lucrative prerogatives ; but the bishop, who saw the greater 
comparative power which the nobles had in consequence 
obtained, took the injudicious step of trying to counter¬ 
balance it by favouring foreigners, instead of the more sure 
and safe, because more wise and just method of conciliating 
them by equity and moderation. Again their remonstrances 
became too loud to be disregarded. Henry, whom Pem¬ 
broke, in order to support him against Louis, had been 
forced to allow to take an oath of fealty to the pope, in 
vain appealed to him as his vassal for protection (his usual 
but disgraceful resource in -times of difficulty), and was 
forced to dismiss the bishop, and to banish the Poitevins; 
but it was only to substitute for the old grievance another 
of the same* kind ; for, on his marriage with Eleanor of Pro¬ 
vence, in 1236, her relations came over in numbers to fatten 
on the wealth for which the kingdom was already becoming 
famous. The chroniclers of the time speak of Henry’s 
magnificence on occasions of festivity as exceeding those of 
any monarch from Ahasuerus to Charlemagne. The pope 
had pronounced England to be an inexhaustible well; and 
the swarm of Savoyards, which now spread themselves like 
locusts over the land, seemed determined to test the truth 
of his assertion. The queen’s uncle, the bishop of Valence, 
became Henry’s chief minister; another native of the same 
country was made archbishop of Canterbury. Baronies, 
estates, and wealthy brides were lavishly distributed among 
the new arrivals, who even induced the weak monarch to 
promise a bull from the pope, authorizing him to recal the 
grants which he had made to different English nobles, in 
order to bestow them anew on his foreign favourites. The 
queen-mother Isabella, too, who, on John’s death, had 
married her former lover, the Count de la Marche, and had 


HENRY III. 


97 


XII.] 

borne him four sons, sent them over to England to get 
their share of the royal bounty, which was dispensed so 
liberally to all except those who had the best claim to it; 
and their rapacity, insatiable as it was, was hardly more 
offensive than the openness with which they proclaimed 
their contempt for the English laws, and* the English 
manners. 

Henry’s weakness at home was not redeemed by glory 
abroad. If not actually a coward, like his father, he had 
none of that enterprising, daring valour so conspicuous in 
his earlier ancestors, and so essential to give influence to 
a king, whose principal subjects understood nothing but 
war, and war, too, of that kind that depended mainly on 
personal prowess. Yet destitute as he was of all military 
skill, he allowed himself to be seduced by the count de la 
Marche to engage in hostilities against Louis IX. At 
the head of 20,000 men he landed at the mouth of the 
Garonne, only to sustain at Taillebourg one of the few 
defeats that the Erench have ever inflicted on the English, 
in which he himself only escaped captivity by the address 
of his brother Richard, to whom Louis thought himself 
obliged for kindnesses which he had shown to some Erench 
knights in the Holy Land. The battle of Taillebourg led 
to a truce, and to negotiations which were continued 
(though more or less interrupted by war) for many years, 
and which w*ere only concluded in 1259 by Henry’s aban¬ 
doning his claims on any territories in Erance except 
Guienne, and receiving a promise of some equivalents in 
future times, which, after the death of Louis, his successor 
never thought of performing. 

The king himself and his favourites were the chief suf¬ 
ferers by the turbulence of the barons, but the whole nation 
w r as distressed and impoverished by the rapacity of the 
clergy, which grew more and more insolent and insatiable. 
The pope had gradually engrossed the appointments to most 
of the richest benefices, and they w r ere sold at Rome in the 
most open and shameless manner to purchasers who sought 
to indemnify themselves by the most immoderate exactions. 
Not content with this source of gain, he proceeded to 
claim a portion of the revenues of every see in England, 
and, though this demand was rejected at the time, he shortly 
afterwards obtained a tenth of all the ecclesiastical revenues ; 
and, as if this were not enough, he sent over a legate to 

ii 


A.D. 

1216— 

1274. 


A.D. 

1216 - 

1272. 


98 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

extort a further aid, who by intrigues and menaces ob¬ 
tained such large sums from the different chapters, that it 
was said and believed that he carried out of the kingdom 
more money than he left in it. His success encouraged 
him to further exactions, till even Henry’s patience gave 
way, and he prohibited compliance with his demands. The 
pope menaced him with excommunication; but as the king 
was supported by some of the bishops, and especially by 
Grossetete of Lincoln, he withdrew his threats, and abated 
some of his pretensions. 

The pope, Innocent IV., however, was not only covetous 
of pecuniary gain, but he entangled Henry in vast expenses 
in the pursuit of political advantages in Italy and Sicily. 
Finding himself unable, by his own power, to dispossess 
the heirs of the emperor Frederic of Sicily, he offered 
the sovereignty of that island first to Charles of Anjou, 
brother of Louis IX., then to Richard, earl of Cornwall, and, 
when both those princes had the prudence to refuse it, he 
offered it to Henry for his second son, Edmund, who at first 
declined it, but shortly afterwards, on the death of Conrad 
and Henry, Frederic’s legitimate sons, accepted it, agreeing 
to pay a large yearly sum to the new pope, Alexander, (for 
Innocent had died during the progress of these negotiations,) 
and to hold himself responsible for all the money that the 
pope had contracted, or might contract, in the prosecution of 
the business. Henry had taken all these steps without 
consulting any of his councillors; and the chief nobles of 
the kingdom were prudently unwilling to assist in a project 
for conquering a distant kingdom to which the king had no 
right, and in which they could have no concern ; but this 
reluctance was changed into indignation when, shortlv after, 
the pope demanded from Henry above 90,000/., as the ex¬ 
pense of the military operations already undertaken, and 
though, when Henry summoned the barons in the hope of 
procuring the money from them, he summoned none of those 
whom he suspected of being most unfavourable to his views, 
he found the whole body animated by the same spirit, and 
they positively refused to grant him any money at all for 
such a purpose. He then turned to the clergy, who were 
hardly more willing to contribute than the barons; but 
they had less power of resistance, and the king was backed 
by the whole power of the pope, who sent a legate to 
England for the express purpose of wringing from them 



99 


XII.] HENRY III. 

every farthing that could be appropriated from the ecclesi- a.d. 
astical revenues; the money which had been collected for 1216— 
an intended crusade was seized for the same purpose; and, 12 ' 2 ‘ 
when Henry had thus assisted in impoverishing his king¬ 
dom to gratify the unprincipled ambition and still more un¬ 
principled rapacity of the pope, he found the bait which 
bad allured him further removed than ever from his grasp; 
for Manfred, a natural son of Frederic, who on the death of 
Conrad had assumed the command, and showed a desire to 
usurp the sovereignty of Sicily himself, had not only de¬ 
feated the pope’s attacks, but had also wrested from him im¬ 
portant territories in Italy; and Urban, the successor of 
Alexander, could devise no means of checking his progress 
except by abandoning prince Edmund altogether, and offer¬ 
ing Sicily a second time to Charles of Anjou, w*ho now ac¬ 
cepted the offer, and, defeating Manfred at Benevento, ob- 1266. 
tained peaceable possession of the whole kingdom. 

In the mean time the barons, whose discontent had been 
gradually increasing, had found a leader in Simon de Mont- 
fort, earl of Leicester, who had married Henry’s sister, the 
widow of the earl of Pembroke; and who had lately re¬ 
turned from the government of Gfuienne, with a high reputa¬ 
tion for activity and military skill, sullied, however, by many 
acts of tyranny, extortion, and cruelty. Henry’s brother 
Richard, w ? ho alone -could have counterbalanced his power, 
had lately been elected king of the Romans, and had quitted 
England to assume his new dignity. Being thus left with¬ 
out a rival, Leicester began not only to head the barons in 
the opposition which the king’s prodigality, weakness, and 
almost exclusive preference of foreigners provoked them to 
make to his demands, but even to assume some degree of 
authority over the barons themselves ; summoning them to 
meet him to consult on the measures to be pursued, and ex¬ 
citing them to such determined measures, that, when Henry 
next convened the whole body to request a supply from 
them, they appeared in complete armour, to show their de¬ 
termination not to shrink even from war itself, if necessary, 
to enforce the redress of their grievances. And they com¬ 
pelled him to sanction the meeting of a council at Oxford, 
over which Leicester presided, which drew up a set of regu¬ 
lations for the future government of the nation, to which 
Henry himself, and his eldest son, Edward, who had already 
given indications of that courage and genius which, in after 


A.D. 

I21G- 

1272. 


12G0. 


100 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dl. 

life, made him so illustrious, were compelled to subscribe, 
though they virtually transferred the whole power of the 
kingdom from the sovereign to this council. 

However, its undisputed pow*er was not of long duration, it 
became unpopular with the rest of the nation ; partly because 
they found that it failed to realize the hopes in which they 
had' indulged when it was first appointed, and partly from 
the insolence with which its members showed that the 
objects which they had most at heart were their own wealth 
and aggrandizement. The earl of Gloucester too, the most 
powerful of the barons next to Leicester, began to grow 
jealous of his superior influence, and the council was dis¬ 
tracted by their quarrels, till at last Gloucester joined the 
king’s party, and Leicester retired into Trance, about three 
years after the meeting at Oxford. 

At first, however, the usurpation of the barons had appeared 
so successful, that the clergy had been led to attempt to imi¬ 
tate it, and to make similar encroachments on the authority of 
the crown, for the advancement of the power and importance 
of their own order. But this conduct of theirs, though in 
general it would have been cordially supported at ltome, 
failed, on this occasion, to find favour with the pope, because 
he considered the mainspring of it to be their jealousy of the 
Italian and Savoyard priests, on whom Henry had showered 
the richest preferments of the kingdom. Accordingly he 
upheld the king against both clergy and barons, annulled the 
ordinances which the former had passed in their synod, and 
absolved Henry and all his subjects from any oath or obligation 
to observe the provisions of Oxford, as the regulations drawn 
up by the barons were usually called. 

The king now began to resume the power of which he 
had been in reality deprived during those three years; he 
offered to submit all matters in dispute between him and his 
barons to the arbitration of Louis IX., a prince of singular 
moderation and virtue ; who, instead of considering England 
a rival nation, and seeking to weaken it by fomenting its 
unhappy divisions, acted the honourable part of trying to re¬ 
concile parties, by bringing the mutinous nobles to a sense 
of their duty as subjects, and the king to a more prudent 
and steady course of government for the future. He might 
probably have succeeded in his benevolent endeavours, but 
unfortunately the earl of Gloucester died, and his son, who 
succeeded to his estates, hastened to attach himself to 


HENRY III. 


101 


XII.] 

Leicester, and the disaffected party. Leicester returned to 
England and openly raised the standard of rebellion, while 
at the same time Llewellyn, the sovereign of Wales, invaded 
the counties nearest the Welsh frontier with a numerous 
army. Prince Edward, however, drove him back to his 
mountains, and his character, daily developing the highest 
qualities, gained so many of the barons over to the king’s 
party, that Leicester agreed to abide by Louis’s arbitration, 
which he had previously refused, and sent one of his sons to 
Erance, whither Henry himself also repaired. Louis ex¬ 
amined the whole question with scrupulous impartiality, and 
pronounced an award which wa3 almost wholly in favour of 
the king. But, when Leicester heard the result, he at once 
rejected his decision and appealed to arms. Both sides 
collected powerful armies, which met at Lewes, in May, 
1284. The king himself was present, but prince Edward 
was the real commander of the royal army. The portion of 
the rebel force that was opposed to the division which he 
commanded in person he easily routed, but his military 
ardour as yet so much exceeded his skill that he pursued 
the flying enemy so far as to leave the rest of his army 
exposed to be surrounded by Leicester, and, when he re¬ 
turned from the pursuit, he found his father and his uncle, 
who had lately come toJiis assistance, prisoners in the hands 
of the rebels. In a truce that was made shortly afterwards, 
the prince surrendered himself as Leicester’s prisoner to 
procure his father’s release ; but the earl, in open defiance of 
the treaty, detained both king and prince in captivity, 
and began to treat every one, even his chief adherents, 
with such insolence, and to amass riches by such cruel 
and shameful expedients, conniving even at the pirates, who 
at that time were the disgrace of the Cinque Ports, on 
condition of receiving a portion of their plunder, that he 
alienated many of his partisans, and would have disgusted 
the whole kingdom, if his open defiance of the pope’s power 
and commands had not, in the minds of many, counter¬ 
balanced all his other bad qualities and evil actions. 

The year 1285 is ever memorable in the constitutional 
history of England, as that in which the first assembly, re¬ 
sembling our modern parliaments, was ever convened. Coun¬ 
cils or parliaments of the barons had been frequently sum¬ 
moned, to deliberate on the affairs of the kingdom, and espe¬ 
cially for the purpose of granting money to the sovereign ; 


AD. 

121 fi— 
1272. 




102 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

121G — and during this reign, and perhaps in the time of John also, 
there had been instances of the counties each deputing a 
> fixed number of knights to bear their share in the delibera¬ 
tions. But the very evil which had been generally looked 
upon as the principal grievance of the nation under Henry, 
namely his encouragement of foreigners, had indirectly been 
productive of good in enlarging the knowledge possessed by 
the people of other countries, and opening a foreign trade, 
under which the towns had been rapidly increasing in wealth 
and importance. As they were able to command or purchase 
indulgence, they in many instances obtained charters and 
other privileges ; and now T , w r hile Henry was a prisoner in 
Leicester’s hands, v r rits for a new parliament were issued, 
summoning, besides the barons, not only knights as repre¬ 
sentatives of each separate county, but citizens or burgesses 
for all the principal cities and towns. It seems most pro¬ 
bable that some years elapsed before this was established 
as the invariable manner of summoning parliaments ; and it 
was not till some years had elapsed in the next reign that 
the commons were allow r ed a separate chamber, and recog¬ 
nized as a distinct branch of the legislative body. But these 
are but trivial incidents in comparison w r ith the main fact, 
that it was thus, in this, in other respects, uninteresting 
reign, that the principle of the right of every class to be 
represented in the great council of the nation was established, 
and the foundation laid of the greatest assembly of freemen 
legislating for their nation, that the world has beheld. 

The captivity of prince Edward had excited general indig¬ 
nation, and Leicester, ever aiming at the acquisition of 
further popularity, agreed to set him at liberty on condition 
of receiving considerable grants for himself, and for some of 
his adherents : but, even after he had obtained his demands, 
be refused to release him, till at last his haughty behaviour 
alienated, as it had done before, some of the most powerful 
of the nobles, and among them the young earl of Gloucester, 
who opened a communication with the prince, and aided 
him to escape. This was the end of the rebellions against 
Henry. The most splendid valour and pnnvess had never 
been wanting to Edward, and the disaster at Lewes had 
l - 65 * taught him caution and military skill. It was on the 28 th of 
May that he escaped from his keepers at Hereford. In the 
course of the ensuing month he took Worcester, Gloucester, 
and compelled the earl of Leicester to seek a refuge among 


HENRY III. 


103 


XII.] 

the Welsh mountains. On the 1st of August he surprised 
his son, Simon de Montfort, at Kenilworth; and, on the 
4th of the same month, utterly routed the father at 
Evesham. Leicester and his eldest son were killed, and the 
whole party completely broken. The king himself was near 
being slain. Leicester had dragged him with him from place 
to place, and had even compelled him to accompany him in 
armour to the field. He was w'ounded and unhorsed; but 
his cry that he was Henry of Winchester the King, reached 
the prince’s ears, who flew to the spot, and placed him in 
safety, while he himself completed the rout of the rebel arm}'. 
After this victory there was no chance of any effectual re¬ 
sistance being made to the king’s authority. One or two 
fortresses held out for a short time, and the citizens of Lon¬ 
don showed a mutinous spirit. But Edward soon terrified 
them into submission; and peace was restored. The prince 
was now his father’s chief minister. He wisely judged that 
the rebels had been too many for it to be prudent, and per¬ 
haps, too, that their complaints had been too well founded 
to make it just to employ severe measures against them now 
that they had returned to their duty. A few of the most 
prominent or most refractory were compelled to pay fines, 
which were accounted unusually moderate; and the indul¬ 
gence shown to the rest, and the general esteem in which 
Edward was held, restored confidence and diffused a general 
feeling of loyalty over the nation. 

So completely tranquillized did the whole country appear 
to be, that four years afterwards the prince thought he could 
safely quit it to gratify his desire to join Louis IX. in the 
crusade, on which that monarch had already departed. His 
expedition, however, was not fortunate. When he reached 
the Erench camp in Africa he found that Louis was dead; 
and, though he proceeded himself to Palestine, and signalized 
himself by achievements which almost recalled the memory 
of the lion-hearted Richard, his prowess was unproductive 
of permanent results, while it had nearly been fatal to him¬ 
self; for with such dismay did his exploits strike the Saracens, 
that, hopeless of subduing him in the open field, the sheikh 
of one of the eastern tribes, called the assassins, sent one of 
his subjects to assassinate him (most European languages have 
borrowed the term from the practice of those unscrupulous 
barbarians). The wretch stabbed the prince with a poi¬ 
soned dagger; but Eleanor, his wife, who had accompanied 


A.D. 

1216— 

1272. 


1270. 




104 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. him the Holy Land, sucked the poison from the wound, 
1^72 hazard, as ^ was believed, of her own life, and Edward 

felt no ill effects from the attempt. 

His absence, however, was very prejudicial to his father’s 
kingdom. The errors of Henry’s government had proceeded 
from weakness rather than from vice, and age had not 
diminished that weakness. His want of firmness was bring¬ 
ing back the disorders which Edward’s prudence and vigour 
had put down, and had prevented from reviving while he 
remained in England. But now the barons again became 
insolent and oppressive; the citizens of London returned to 
their licentious, mutinous spirit; Henry’s brother, too, the 
king of the Romans, who was still in England, and who had 
had great influence and authority in the kingdom, was 
broken in spirit by the loss of his son Henry, who was 
murdered in Italy by two of the sons of the earl of Leicester; 
sorrow brought on paralysis, of which he died; and Henry 
had no one to whom he could turn for advice or for support. 
He wrote earnest letters to his son, conjuring him to return ; 
but, before he could receive an answer, his health, which 
anxiety and distress had long been undermining, gave way, 
and in November, 1272, he died at Bury, in the fifty-seventh 
year of his reign, leaving behind him a character distinguished 
by no particular personal virtues nor vices. His reign was 
unhappy to himself, and full of trouble, arising from con¬ 
stant dissensions with his people ; but the free parliaments, 
which these troubles called into existence, have been the 
source of so many blessings, that it cannot be pronounced 
unfortunate for the nation. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

EDWARD I. 

1272 — Edward was thirty-four years of age when he ascended the 
1296. throne of his ancestors, and of the highest reputation, not 
only for prowess and military skill unequalled since the time 
of' the lion-hearted Richard, but also for the more valuable ' 
qualities of moderation, wisdom, and equity. Though he 
was abroad at the time of his father’s death, the council of 


1 



EDWARD I. 


105 


XIII.] 

Henry caused him at once to be proclaimed king, in virtue 
of his hereditary right, without waiting for any form of elec¬ 
tion by the nobles, as had been the case on the accession of 
previous monarchs. He had quitted the Holy Land, and 
was in Italy, when he received the news of his father’s death : 
but, as he learnt that his succession had been peaceably 
acknowledged in England, he delayed some time in France, 
settling the affairs of Gfuienne, and arranging a dispute with 
the countess of Flanders, who had seized the property of the 
English merchants trading in her dominions, on favourable 
terms ; so that it was not till the autumn of the vear 1274 
that he arrived in England. 

He had ample occupation at first in re-establishing order 
and obedience to the laws throughout the kingdom. During 
the late reign they had been gradually reduced to a more 
regular system, and had become the subject of study to a 
distinct class of men, who began to cultivate the science as 
their regular profession. But this increased knowledge had 
been so greatly counteracted by the anarchy arising from 
rebellion and civil war, that it had failed to produce any 
material improvement in the manners and conduct of the 
population. Complaints of robbery, incendiarism, and mur¬ 
der were never more rife, and the perpetrators of these 
crimes were so frequently protected by powerful nobles that 
the magistrates were afraid to put the law in force against 
them. In fact there was still, and fora long time subsequent 
to the period of which we are writing, a sympathy for those 
who sought to improve their condition by plunder, as for 
men who, by what, in other cases, has been called a sort of 
“wild justice,” sought to redress the inequalities of for¬ 
tune, or the wrongs inflicted by oppressors and usurpers; so 
that even as late as Henry the Sixth’s reign that eminent 
judge, chief justice Eortescue, actually exulted in the fact, that 
there were more robberies committed in one year in England, 
than in France in seven, and looks on it as a proof of the 
high spirit of the nation, that, “ if an Englishman be poor, 
and see another have riches which may be taken from him 
by might, he will not spare to do so.” With a spirit so 
general as thus to infect even those who were most likely 
to be the objects of plunder, and whose especial duty it was 
to punish it, it was no easy matter to grapple successfully: 
but Edward was too ardent a lover of law and justice not to 
make the attempt, or to allow such crimes to derive encou- 


A.D. 

1272— 

1296. 





106 




HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. ragement from impunity ; and he appointed what in modern 
1272 — times would be called a special commission to travel through 
1296 ‘ the kingdom, and to put down such practices with unsparing 
severity. Throughout his whole reign his anxiety to secure 
equal justice to all his subjects was one of the most con¬ 
spicuous features of his character; nor, severe as he was 
towards all offenders, were there any on whom he inflicted 
heavier punishment than on those judges who, on one occa¬ 
sion, took advantage of his absence from the country to 
gratify their rapacity, screening the most atrocious criminals 
who could offer sufficient bribes. His feeling that, wherever 
practicable, justice, to be satisfactory, must be cheap and 
speedy, led to the establishment of justices of the peace, who 
continue, with very slight alteration of their powers and 
duties, to the present day. It would exceed our limits to 
enumerate the additions which, amid all his more active 
operations, he found time to make to the English code, 
tending so greatly to its improvement and completion, that, 
above 300 years afterwards, sir M. Hale, one of the most 
illustrious of English judges, remarked, that he left it so 
perfect that since his time it had neither received nor re¬ 
quired any considerable increase or alteration. 

In one instance his zeal to remedy disorders led him into 
measures of severity which were not only unjust and op¬ 
pressive, but also impolitic. The adulteration and clipping 
of the coinage, an evil which had been often complained of 
in past reigns, and had been forbidden by most severe 
enactments, again prevailed to a greater degree than ever, 
and was attributed, probably with truth, to the Jews, then, 
as now, the principal money-dealers in the kingdom. They 
had first come to England in the time of the Conqueror, 
and, though their riches often exposed individuals to extor¬ 
tion and cruelty, such as that practised by John, who com¬ 
manded a Jew to lend him a large sum of money, and 
ordered one of his teeth to be drawn every day till he com¬ 
plied ; and though, on more than one occasion, they had 
been the objects of more organized violence from the popu¬ 
lace, they had been generally encouraged by the sovereign 
and protected by the law; but, from the beginning of his 
reign, Edward was unfriendly to them; prompted, according 
to some of the ancient chroniclers, by his mother, or by his 
wife, who procured from him the greater part of their 
spoils. He forbade them to build synagogues, he compelled 


EDWARD I. 


107 


XIII.] 

them to wear a distinguishing dress, he levied an exclusive 
tax upon them. Of this charge of tampering with the 
coinage great numbers were now convicted and hanged, and 
all their property was confiscated. While punishment fell 
only on the guilty there was no cause for complaint, for their 
crime was injurious to public credit, and productive of great 
misery to the poor ; but three or four years later every one 
of the Jewish race in the whole island was thrown into 
prison, nor were they released till they paid a fine of 12,0007, 
though, on this occasion, no charge was made against 
them, and in 1290 the whole nation was banished. They 
were allowed to take with them a small supply of money to 
furnish them with the means of travelling to other countries ; 
but all the rest of their possessions, their houses, and lands, 
and the treasures which they had accumulated were seized 
by the king. Their number was upwards of 16,000 ; and 
as they were not only a rich, but an industrious and saga¬ 
cious body of men, the prosperity of the kingdom received a 
great check from this banishment of them, as Spain did 
afterwards from the adoption of a similar measure by Fer¬ 
dinand and Isabella. 

Edward had been probably led to this unjust and im¬ 
politic measure by the necessities of his treasury, which the 
Great Charter prevented him from replenishing by the arbi¬ 
trary exactions of the Norman kings. He adopted a wiser 
plan when he remodelled the administration of his revenue, 
introducing the strictest economy into every branch of the 
expenditure, checking the encroachments which his father’s 
weakness had encouraged, and by his prudence conciliating 
all classes, so that the parliament voted him the taxes which 
he requested, and the pope sanctioned his levying a corre¬ 
sponding contribution on the ecclesiastical revenues. 

He had been but a short time on the throne when he 
undertook the reduction of Wales. For a very long period 
there had been an almost incessant border warfare between 
that country and England, provoked chiefly by the Welsh, 
who made incursions on the more fertile plains of the 
neighbouring counties, and, when loaded with booty, sought 
shelter among the fastnesses of their native mountains. 
They had been particular^ obnoxious to Edward during his 
father’s reign, as taking the part of, and affording a refuge 
to Leicester, and one of his earliest expeditions as a com¬ 
mander had been an invasion of their territory, in which he 


A.D. 

1272— 

1296. 


108 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. penetrated as far as Snowdon without being able to bring 
19 < r them to battle. He now determined to prevent any repetition 
’ of these hostilities by the complete subjection of the country ; 
and Llewellyn the king was unwise enough to afford him a 
legitimate pretext for attacking him, by refusing to come to 
England to do him homage, as his predecessors had done. 
At first Edward was assisted by intestine divisions among 
the Welsh, as Llewellyn’s brother David, who had been 
deprived by him of his inheritance, sided with the invader, 
and Llewellyn was soon reduced to submission ; but again 
hostilities broke out between the inhabitants on both sides 
of the border, and David, though he had been treated with 
especial favour and honour by Edward, now joined his 
brother in his attempt to recover the freedom of his nation. 
Edward took the Welsh in the rear, seizing upon Anglesey 
with his fleet, and throwing a bridge over the Menai, near 
the spot where the greatest wonder of modern architecture 
has immortalized the name of Stephenson, he led his army 
across the strait; Llewellyn was defeated and slain ; David, 
who succeeded him, after a vain attempt to collect a second 
force able to cope with the English monarch, was compelled 
to surrender; and Edward, looking upon him rather as a 
rebellious subject (as in one point of view he was, for he had 
married an English heiress, and had accepted the appoint¬ 
ment of seneschal of the king’s castles in Wales) than as an 
independent prince in arms for his hereditary and national 
rights, brought him to trial as a traitor, caused him to be 
executed, and annexed the principality to the English crown. 
One of the finest odes in the English language is founded 
on a tradition that his fear of the spirit-stirring music of 
the Welsh bards exciting their countrymen to fresh insur¬ 
rections, led him to put them also to death ; but though the 
poetry of Gray has forbidden the tale to die by embalming 
it in his imperishable verse, it is satisfactory to know that it 
has no real foundation, and that the fame of Edward is clear 
from a stain so foreign to his character as the causeless 
slaughter of these unoffending minstrels. 

The union of the two countries was a blessing to both. Eng¬ 
land was freed by it from an enemy ever on the watch to take 
advantage of any disorders or divisions which might make her 
even temporarily vulnerable, and Wales received the benefit of 
the English laws, now steadily and equitably administered; 
the land was divided into counties, and the government of 


EDWARD I. 


109 


XIII.] 

each placed under regulations similar to those which pre- a.d. 
vailed in England, and the compliment paid to the nation 12 7 2 — 
by Edward conferring the title of prince of Wales on his 
infant son, who, about the time of his conquest, was born at 1284. 
Caernarvon, tended greatly to reconcile them to the sub¬ 
jection which those classes most interested in the preserva¬ 
tion of order and tranquillity soon perceived to be less 
fruitful of imaginary dishonour than of solid benefit. 

The northern frontier of the kingdom had, though scarcely 
in an equal degree, also suffered from the predatory in¬ 
cursions of the Scots; gnd Edward, who perceived how 
important it was to have the government of the whole 
island consolidated under one head, was equally desirous 
to annex Scotland to his dominions; and in the fourteenth 1280. 
year of his reign events occurred which gave him hopes of 
effecting his object in a peaceful manner. Alexander III., 
who had been married to his sister, died, leaving as his 
heiress his grandchild Margaret, the daughter of the king 
of Norway. She was rather younger than the infant prince 
of Wales ; and Edward proposed to the Scottish nobles to 
contract the two children to each other. They readily 
discerned the advantage to their country of being thus 
incorporated on equal and honourable terms with their 
more powerful and wealthy neighbour, and there was every 
prospect of the union so desirable taking place in the hap¬ 
piest manner, when unfortunately the infant princess died 
on her voyage from Norway to Scotland, and several com¬ 
petitors arose for the succession. It was acknowledged 
that the true heir was to be found in the descendants of 
David, brother of William the Lion, who had left three 
daughters; and the two claimants, whose pretensions a very 
slight examination showed to be superior to those of all 
their rivals, were John Balliol, the grandson of the eldest, 
and Eobert Bruce, the son of the second daughter. Now 
that the principles of inheritance are better understood, the 
case would be clear enough in favour of Balliol; but at 
that time it was questioned by many whether Bruce, as 
being one degree nearer the parent stock, had not the 
preferable right; and the point in dispute was referred to 
the decision of Edward, whose reputation for justice and 
wisdom stood so high throughout Europe, that the kings 
of France and Spain had a short time before referred their 
quarrels to his arbitration, and he had effected a peace 


a.d. 

1272- 

129G. 


110 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

between them on terms universally commended for their 
prudence and equity. 

In the case of Scotland, however, he was not quite so 
disinterested a judge. The kings of England had often 
claimed, and sometimes extorted from those of Scotland 
homage not merely for the English counties, which for a 
time belonged to their crown, but for their whole kingdom. 
'William the Lion, who, as has been already mentioned, 
was taken prisoner by Henry II., only recovered his liberty 
swearing fealty to his conqueror; but Richard, when 
collecting money for the crusade, had sold his successor 
a complete release from any such obligation for the future; 
and in spite of the bold assertion of Edward to the con¬ 
trary, it seems very unlikely that the weakness of John and 
of Henry should have been able to reimpose the yoke 
which had been borne at all times so unwillingly. Edward, 
however, now required a public acknowledgment of his 
rights as liege lord of Scotland to decide the controversy, 
and advanced with a powerful army towards the frontier 
to enforce his own claim before proceeding to decide on 
those of the competitors for the succession. The Scottish 
parliament, and the rival claimants of the throne, who had 
come to meet him at Norham, a castle on the English side 
of the Tweed, were taken by surprise at his demand, but 
felt themselves too much in his power to dispute it. The 
utmost that they ventured to do was to decline giving a 
positive answer at that time. But Bruce and Balliol, more 
anxious for the success of their own pretensions than for 
the independence of their country, both admitted it, and 
each agreed to do him homage for the kingdom, if the 
decision should be in his favour. The king appointed com¬ 
missioners to examine into their respective titles, and as 
they reported unanimously in favour of Balliol, he pro¬ 
nounced sentence in accordance with their opinion, and 
Balliol was crowned king of Scotland. 

Hitherto Edward’s conduct, even if it were not quite 
generous thus to take advantage of the defenceless state of 
a kingdom left without a master, and submitting its affairs 
voluntarily to his arbitration, had at least not been open to 
any grave impeachment on the score of justice; for the 
claim of superiority which he advanced was no new inven¬ 
tion of his own, but one which had been enforced on more 
than one occasion by his predecessors; but he soon showed 


EDWARD T. 


Ill 


XIII.] 

that it was not his intention to be satisfied with a bare a.d. 
admission of his right, but that lie was determined so to 12 72— 
exercise it, as to convert it into a real practical supremacy. 1 J 
He encouraged appeals from Scotland to the English courts, 
and was continually summoning Balliol to appear in London 
to defend the decisions of the Scotch judges. The position 
of vassal, to which he had voluntarily submitted, made him 
legally liable to such summonses; but the constant recur¬ 
rence of them now showed that their object was not so 
much to obtain justice, as either to humble Balliol to the 
condition of an ordinary subject, or else to provoke him to 
resistance, which might be treated as rebellion. 

Balliol had grown very discontented at his treatment 
without venturing to show his feelings, when disputes arose 
between Erance and England, out of a quarrel between the 
Norman fishermen and those from the Cinque Ports. At 
last, when the Normans, with upwards of 200 ships, sailed 
up the Channel in bravado, plundering wherever they could 
find an opportunity, the inhabitants of Portsmouth and the 
Cinque Ports fitted out a fleet of eighty vessels, attacked 
the Normans and defeated them, bringing back almost every 
French vessel as their prize into the English harbours. 

Philip at first demanded reparation from Edward as king of 
England; then, as Edward seemed inclined to defend the 
conduct of the English sailors, he summoned him to appear 
in his courts to answer to the charge, as his vassal for 
Aquitaine and Guienne, and, on his refusal to appear, de¬ 
clared those duchies to be forfeited, and prepared to take 
possession of them. In the negotiations which ensued, it 
was agreed that Edward should marry Margaret, Philip’s 
sister, and that the issue of that marriage should inherit 
Edward’s French dominions. In his eagerness to further 
this arrangement, Edward consented to make a temporary 
cession of Guienne, by way of saving Philip’s honour, lest 
he should appear to have submitted to the injury inflicted 
on his sailors without exacting any redress, and Philip 
solemnly promised to restore it at the end of forty days. 

But as soon as he had got possession of it, he refused to 
perform his part of the agreement, and Edward, enraged at 
having been thus outwitted, declared war against him, form¬ 
ing alliances with many of the sovereign princes on the 
French frontier, and sending a formidable army into Guienne, 
which, however, performed no exploit of importance. I he 


A.D. 

1272 — 

1296. 


1290. 


112 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CLI. 

war was continued slowly and feebly for eight years, when, 
by the mediation of pope Boniface, peace was made in 1303, 
and Edward recovered the provinces which it had been so 
un justly attempted to wrest from him. 

But this war, when it first broke out, had appeared to 
Balliol likely to cause so much embarrassment to the king of 
England, as to afford himself an opportunity of shaking off a 
vassalage so ignominious and so irksome. Accordingly he 
made overtures to Philip, and concluded a defensive and 
offensive alliance with France, one of the terms of which was, 
that his eldest son should marry Philip’s niece. And this 
was the beginning of that close union which so long bound 
the two kingdoms together, till the death of the unfortunate 
Mary, and which caused such frequent troubles to England 
during its continuance. Edward, however, was not of a 
temper to be daunted by the number of his enemies ; but, 
regarding the hostility of Scotland as of greater importance 
than the war with France, the moment he received informa¬ 
tion of the steps thus taken by Balliol, he marched himself 
towards the Scottish borders, at the head of a powerful army, 
to reduce him to submission. On the frontier he received 
an embassy from Balliol, who had obtained from pope 
Celestine absolution from his oath of fealty, renouncing 
allegiance to him ; but, though the Scottish monarch had 
collected a force more numerous than the English army, it 
was not sufficiently at hand to protect him from the con¬ 
sequence of this hasty defiance ; Edward’s reply to which 
was couched in actions rather than words. He instantly 
stormed Berwick, and put the garrison to the sword ; and 
then sent Warrenne, earl of Surrey (a title terrible to the 
Scots in future times, as linked with the greatest over¬ 
throw they ever experienced) with 12,000 men to besiege 
Dunbar. The whole Scotch army, amounting to upwards of 
40,000 men, marched to the relief of that important fortress. 
They occupied the hills surrounding the town, and, with 
ordinary prudence, might have reduced the English general 
to great difficulties ; but, deceived by a retrograde movement 
on his part, they descended from their commanding position, 
(they repeated the same blunder, on the same ground, with 
a similar disastrous result, nearly 400 years afterwards,) 
and engaged him in the plain, where the superior equip¬ 
ment and discipline of his troops more than counterbalanced 
the inequality of numbers. They were defeated with great 


EDWARD I. 


113 


XIV.] 


slaughter, and this victory over their only army left the a. n. 
whole kingdom at the mercy of the conqueror. The 12 ? 2 — 
strongest fortresses and the most important towns at once 
submitted to him ; and Balliol himself signed an acknow¬ 
ledgment that by his renunciation of fealty to his liege 
lord he had justly forfeited his kingdom. His submission 
was followed by that of the Scottish parliament and nobility, 
and they all successively did homage to Edward, who re¬ 
turned to England, taking with him Balliol as his prisoner, 
and carrying off also the regalia of Scotland, and an ancient 
stone on which the kings had been used to sit at their coro¬ 


nation, and to which popular superstition and legendary 
prophecies had long attached a mysterious reverence as the 
palladium of the monarchy *. In London, Balliol was treated 
with as much indulgence as was compatible with his safe 
detention ; and after a couple of years’ confinement, on his 
promise never again to interfere in the affairs of Scotland, 
he was allowed to retire to his estates in Normandy, where 
he died in the early part of the next century, almost two 
years before Edward himself. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

EDWARD I. (CONTINUED). 

Edward was now for a while undisputed sovereign of the 1206 — 
whole island. Many of the chief Scottish nobles had joined 13 °7* 
him even before Balliol’s submission ; nor was this conduct 
unnatural; for, though possessed of Scottish estates and 
Scottish titles, they could trace their first connexion with 
the country to a very recent date. They nearly all, 
like Bruce and Balliol themselves, were descended from 
Norman barons, in only the third or fourth generation. 

Many of them had lands also in England, to which kingdom 
they therefore owed nearly equal allegiance ; and, when the 
two countries were divided by hostilities, their adherence to 
either was probably determined more by the character of 

l It now forms the support of Edward the Confessor’s chair, in which the 
sovereign sits at his coronation; so that the prophecy, which attached dominion 
to the place where it should be kept, is still fulfilled. 



W t 


114 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 


1 ^9(J— 


07. 


the rival sovereigns than by any other consideration. They, 
therefore, willingly acquiesced in what, to them, was scarcely 
a foreign yoke; but the less powerful and aristocratic 
classes, the*native Scotch, bore their subjection to England 
with an impatience which the lawless conduct of the English 
garrisons, and the insolent rapacity of Cressingham, the 
English treasurer, did not tend to diminish. They found a 
leader in William Wallace, a man of gentle birth, but of too 
moderate fortune to be placed in the way of royal favour or 
royal notice; and who was, moreover, united to the party 
hostile to England by his private misfortunes, having been 
declared an outlaw for having killed an Englishman in some 
casual fray. Being greatly distinguished for unusual per¬ 
sonal strength and prowess, he had no difficulty in collect¬ 
ing round him a band of men discontented and desperate 
like himself, and he was joined by the chief of the house of 
Douglas, who had been taken prisoner by Edward at Ber¬ 
wick, but had been ransomed, and who now brought his 
followers, and many also of the smaller barons who were in¬ 
fluenced by his name, to range themselves under the standard 
of their country. 

Edward himself was in Elanders, where his ally, the earl 
of that country, had been defeated by Philip, when he re¬ 
ceived the news of this unexpected insurrection. It had 
been his intention to join the earl in person, at the beginning 
of the war, which he had persuaded him to commence, but 
at first he had been detained in England by the necessity of 
putting his own affairs on a sound footing; in 1295, ex¬ 
asperated by the loss of Guienne, and anticipating, not un¬ 
willingly, that outbreak of the Scots, which resulted in the 
deposition of Balliol, he assembled a parliament, summoning 
knights of the shire, and burgesses from all the chief towns 
in each county, giving, in his proclamation issued for that 
purpose, the reason “ that it is a most equitable rule that 
what concerns all should be approved of by all, and that 
common dangers should be repelled by united efforts.” 
It was on this occasion that the commons first occupied a 
separate chamber. They were, as yet, hardly recognized as 
having a right to interfere in the general legislation of the 
kingdom; their provfnce was rather considered to be the 
deliberating, on the part of their constituents, on the taxes 
which the king wished to impose, and devising means to 
furnish him with the supplies which he required. But it 


EDWARD I. 


115 


XIV.] 

soon became a custom for them to append to their grants 
petitions for the redress of any grievances of which they 
had cause to complain; and it was an easy step from com¬ 
plaining of evils to consult on the means of remedying or 
preventing them. They now willingly granted him what he 
demanded, hut his operations were so extensive that he soon 
found his necessities exceed the grants which he had re¬ 
quested ; and he endeavoured to supply the deficiency hy 
his own arbitrary power. He first laid a heavy tax on the 
clergy; the pope prohibited them from paying it; hut he 
put all who refused out of the protection of the law, and 
soon reduced them to obedience; while the sole result of 
their attempted resistance was to diminish the respect en¬ 
tertained for their body by the people, w r ho had seen the 
pope’s prohibitions and most violent menaces wholly dis¬ 
regarded, and the priests themselves, in many instances, 
treated with a contumely which made them objects rather of 
ridicule than of pity. But when he turned from the clergy 
to the laity he had less success. He had always refused or 
evaded any confirmation of the Great Charter, and had 
given many indications of an inclination to disregard its 
provisions; and he now proceeded to violate the most 
essential of them by imposing heavy taxes by his own 
authority, especially one on the exportation of wool, at that 
time the most important article of commerce in the king¬ 
dom. He adopted equally illegal measures to increase his 
army, requiring the small landowners, whose tenure obliged 
them to no such service, to join the force which he was 
collecting for the invasion of France. The merchants and 
freeholders were now as discontented as the clergy, and they 
found a more effectual support than the pope in the most 
powerful nobles of the kingdom. Bohun, earl of Hereford, 
the constable, and Bigod, earl of Norfolk, the marshal of 
England, worthy successors of those iron barons who had 
won the liberties of their country on Bunnimede, now 
showed themselves as resolute to resist him, valiant, powerful, 
and wise as he was, as their ancestors had been to check the 
tyranny of his cowardly, helpless, and despicable grandfather. 
No Plantagenet was ever very patient of contradiction, and 
Edward’s fury rose to such a height that he threatened the 
constable to hang him if he persisted in his disregard of his 
commands. But the steadiness and union of the nobles 
compelled him to pause in his course. He had that true 


A.B. 

1296— 

1307. 


116 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. statesmanlike wisdom which knows how to recede from un- 
1296 — warrantable pretensions with a good grace. He assembled 
the nobles, laid before them a plain statement of the ne¬ 
cessities which had driven him to the measures of which 
they complained, promised to redress the grievances which 
gave dissatisfaction, and at last, though not without a severe 
struggle, he was induced to confirm the Great Charter in 
every particular, and even to give greater guarantees for its 
observance than had hitherto been provided. There is no 
way in which the foreign wars of our early sovereigns were 
so beneficial to the nation as in making them dependent on 
their people for their supplies, and so forcing them to con¬ 
ciliate their affections by the acknowledgment of their rights 
and the confirmation of their liberties. 

For a while Wallace contented himself with improving the 
discipline and raising the spirits of his men by trivial 
skirmishes and attempts on inconsiderable places, in which 
he was so successful as to acquire a renown which rapidly 
augmented his army ; but it was still far inferior to the host 
with which Surrey, whom Edward had left as governor of 
Scotland, overtook him at Stirling. At that time the Forth 
was spanned by a bridge so narrow as scarcely to admit 
more than two persons abreast; behind this bridge Wallace 
stationed his army, and Surrey, contrary to his own judgment, 
was persuaded by the unskilful impetuosity of Cressingham 
to cross it to attack the enemy; but only a small portion of 
his army had reached the other side of the river when it was 
attacked and overpowered by Wallace; the bridge broke 
under the weight of the squadrons pressing across it to 
assist their comrades; thousands were drowned in the river, 
thousands were slain by the Scots, who gave no quarter, (nor 
is this any particular reproach to them, for the age was 
merciless in its warfare, and the most chivalrous and mag¬ 
nanimous princes felt themselves under no obligation to 
spare a conquered foe,) and Surrey fled almost unaccompanied 
to England to announce his own defeat and the loss of the 
kingdom entrusted to him. 

The joy inspired by this victory was such that an as¬ 
sembly of the Scottish states unanimously appointed Wallace 
guardian of the kingdom, but he did not allow it to buoy 
him up to an undue confidence in the resources of himself 
and his countrymen to resist the exertions which all who 
knew Edward’s character doubted not that he would make 


EDWARD I. 


117 


XIV.] 

to repair the disaster which had befallen his arms. He 
hastened from Flanders, and crossed the borders at the 
head of the most powerful army that had ever yet been seen 
in Scotland. Wallace retired, laying waste the country in his 
retreat, in order to embarrass the invader by a scarcity of pro¬ 
visions; but Edward’s resolution triumphed over every diffi¬ 
culty and every obstacle. Sleeping on the ground like a com¬ 
mon soldier, with his horse picketed beside him, he received a 
kick from the animal, which broke some of his ribs, but still 
he pressed onwards, and on the 22nd of July, 1298, found 
his enemies in his front, drawn up in battle array on Ealkirk 
Moor. 

The Scotch army was far less numerous than the English; 
but proud of the recent triumph at Stirling, and full of 
confidence in their leader,' they clamoured loudly to be led 
to battle. His reply was brief, but well addressed to men 
who held the independence of their country in their right 
hands. “ I have brought you to the ring, dance as you 
can.” The spirit of the bishop of Beauvais still lingered 
among the English clergy; for one division of the cavalry 
which commenced the attack was led by the bishop of 
Durham. The Scottish spearmen received their charge with 
gallant firmness; but the knights behaved so ill as greatly 
to countenance the charge, which common rumour made 
against them, of having been tampered with by Edward, 
and having betrayed their gallant leader from jealousy of 
being commanded by one of inferior birth and rank to 
themselves. Whatever the cause may have been, the de¬ 
struction of the Scottish host was almost complete, and for 
the third time within a very few years the fate of Scotland 
was decided by a single battle. 

Edward was preparing to follow up his blow, when he 
received a message from pope Boniface claiming Scotland 
as a dependency of the see of Borne, because it had been 
converted to Christianity by the bones of St. Andrew, the 
brother of St. Peter, and desiring Edward to send proctors 
to Borne to discuss his claim to the throne of that king¬ 
dom before himself as judge. King and parliament alike 
scorned to submit to such insolent dictation; but a truce 
made with France, in which Scotland, as one ot the allies ot 
France, was included, gave her a short breathing time. 
Wallace resigned the guardianship of the kingdom, and sir 
John Comvn, with Bruce, the grandson of Balliol’s com- 


A.D. 

I29fi— 

1307- 


1290. 


118 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. petitor, and the bishop of St. Andrew’s, were appointed to 

i‘296— s UCC eed him; and, on the renewal of hostilities in 1302, 

1307 ' Comyn and sir Simon Frazer annihilated the army of the 

English general, sir John Seward, at Eoslin, and again 
Edward returned to conduct the war in person. Success, 
wherever he appeared, was so invariable, that the guardians 
had no heart to prolong an apparently hopeless contest, and 
submitted. On many of the leading nobles the king im¬ 
posed severe penalties for their rebellion; but all overtures 
of the friends of Wallace on his behalf were rejected, and 
a price was set upon his head sufficient to tempt one of 
his servants to betray him. Edward was usually a generous 
and magnanimous prince; but Wallace had too nearly dis¬ 
appointed his dearest schemes to be treated with the mercy 
which might well have been shown to a conquered and 
captive enemy, or with the respect which was due to a 
patriot and a hero, who had borne arms for no object but his 
August country’s independence. He was taken to London, brought 
23rd > to a formal trial as a rebel and traitor, and beheaded on 
1305 - Tower Hill. 

After having been the object of universal admiration and 
pity for 500 years, an eminent writer 2 of the present 
century has attempted to show that he was neither the 
good nor the great man that the exaggeration of the 
ancient chroniclers has invariably represented, and the 
fondness of his countrymen has implicitly believed him. 
Jt may seem a sufficient reply to such a perverse estima¬ 
tion of him, that if that unanimous praise of his character, 
and that no less unanimous attachment to his memory fail 
to prove the justice of the common opinion respecting him, 
the hostility manifested by Edward, only to be appeased by 
his death, is an undeniable evidence of its truth. A con¬ 
temptible foe could neither have been feared nor hated by 
that great king; but he felt that, while Wallace lived, the 
success of his schemes for the subjection of Scotland was 
precarious; and he paid involuntary homage to his great¬ 
ness in the relentless firmness with which he sought for 
his blood. He knew well what his courage and love of 
freedom while alive might effect. He could not divine that 
his example when dead would rouse a still greater hero to 
imitate his bright example, of equal valour and prowess, 


3 Dr. Lingard. See c. xvi. of his history. 



EDWARD I. 


119 



of still greater skill and wisdom, by bis chivalrous character 
and mighty exploits, still more worthy to be admired, and 
loved, and trusted by his countrymen. It is no digression to 
dwell on the virtues of these men of whom human nature itself 
may well be proud. Though they warred against England, 
we cannot look upon them as enemies; at all events, since 
the union of the two kingdoms has made us a united people, 
there is no Englishman who may not own a national pride 
in the purity of purpose, the honest patriotism of Wallace, 
and feel his heart glow with all a countryman’s exultation 
in the heroic constancy, the unsullied triumphs of Scot¬ 
land’s champion and deliverer, the kingly victor of Ban¬ 
nockburn. 

Edward now looked upon Scotland as wholly subdued, 
and proceeded to form a constitution for his new kingdom, 
and to make careful provision for that uniformity of laws 
and strict administration of justice which he had esta¬ 
blished in his hereditary dominions. But soon he was 
unexpectedly aroused from his dream of tranquillity by the 
rising up of a more formidable enemy than he had ever 
encountered. 

About the same time that Wallace was executed in 
London, Balliol died in France; his son showed no inclina¬ 
tion to return to Scotland ; and, next to him, Comyn, the 
son of Balliol’s sister, who had defeated the English at 
Boslin, was the representative of that family, and, as far 
as inheritance could give it him, had the best right to the 
Scottish throne. But the Bruces, who had never ac¬ 
quiesced in the sentence pronounced in Balliol’s favour, 
w*ere now headed by the grandson of the original compe¬ 
titor for the crown, a man whose great ambition and greater 
abilities were well calculated to give a lustre to the claims 
which he was preparing to advance. His early manhood 
gave no promise of his future glory. Fie had succeeded to 
his grandfather’s earldom of Carrick twelve years before; 
but his behaviour had been temporizing and vacillating. 
He bad submitted to Edward, and been consulted by him 
on the atfairs of his country, when circumstances which 
are entirely unknown, very probably the knowledge of 
Edward’s failing health, and of the weak character of his 
son and heir, determined him to play a nobler part, and 
to rescue his country from her usurping conqueror. 
Though there had been on many accounts ill blood between 


A.D. 

129G— 

1307. 


1305. 


120 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.i>. Bruce and the Comyns, it was so plainly necessary for the 
IpiXj— efforts of Scotland to be united if they were to be effectual, 
that he revealed his intention to Comyn, who betrayed it 
to Edward; and it was only by the timely hint of a friend, 
who, not daring to give him written intelligence, sent him 
a piece of money, and a pair of spurs, and to his own 
address in baffling pursuit, by having his horse’s shoes 
reversed, that he was able to escape in safety from England 
before the orders of Edward to secure him could be executed. 
On his arrival in Scotland he had an interview with Comyn. 
The church of the Minorites, at Dumfries, was the place 
chosen, as each had but too much reason not to trust him¬ 
self in the power of the other. But the holy character of 
the place could not restrain the disappointed irritation of 
the one noble, or the indignant exasperation of the other. 
Comyn gave Bruce the lie, and Bruce wounded him with 
his dagger. Horror-struck at his sacrilegious act, he rushed 
from the church, telling his friend Kirkpatrick, who stood 
at the door awaiting the issue of the conference, that he 
doubted he had slain Comyn. “Do you doubt?” said 
Kirkpatrick; “I make sure:” and, before Bruce could 
prevent him, he rushed into the chapel and completed 
the bloody deed. The English justiciaries, who were hold¬ 
ing their assize at Dumfries at the time, alarmed at the 
outrage, barricadoed the hall in which they sat, but Bruce 
compelled them to surrender, and dismissed them from the 
kingdom. 

After these violent actions there was no safety for him 
as a subject of Edward ; his only chance of security was as an 
independent sovereign. Accordingly, he claimed the throne 
for which he had now no competitor; and many of the 
most valiant, if not the most powerful of the nobles, eagerly 
supported him. To give due solemnity to his assumption 
of the royal dignity he resolved to be crowned at Scone; 
and as the earl of Fife, whose hereditary privilege it 
was to place the crown on his sovereign’s head, refused to 
attend, his sister, the countess of Buchan, took his place, 
and, on the 27th of March, 1306, placed a narrow circlet of 
gold (for Edward had carried off the ancient crown of the 
kingdom) on the head of the new monarch. 

The murder of Comyn, and the expulsion of the justices, 
had kindled Edward’s auger, which was exasperated still 
further by the news of this bold act of defiance. He sent 


EDWARD I. 


121 


XIV.] 

forward one of his, most distinguished soldiers, Ajmer de 
Valence, to keep Bruce and his rebellious adherents in 
check; and, to give a more imposing air to his own pre¬ 
parations, held a great festival in the Temple in London, 
at which he knighted the prince of Wales, and 270 of his 
companions. At the banquet after the ceremony, according 
to the singular fashion of the times, two swans, in nets of 
gold, were placed upon the table. The aged king vowed 
to God, and to the swans, that he would revenge the death 
of Comvn upon his rebellious murderers; and the prince 
swore, with equal solemnity, that he would not sleep two 
nights in the same place till he had accomplished his and 
his father’s vow. 

Bruce’s first attempts in support of his new dignity 
were very unsuccessful. In a skirmish near Perth with 
De Valence he was defeated, and only saved from death or 
captivity by the valour of his brother-in-law Seaton ; and 
at last he was forced to seek a refuge during the winter in 
a small island on the Irish coast, while many of his most 
trusted adherents and nearest relatives fell into the power 
of Edward, who executed all the men without mercy as 
traitors and rebels, and threw* many of the women into 
prison, among w r hom were Bruce’s wife and daughter, and 
the countess of Buchan. There seemed likely to be too 
much truth in the forebodings of Bruce’s wife, w r ho had 
expressed her fears at his coronation, that he would be but 
a summer king. But though to the attack which Edward 
was preparing for him were added the terrors of papal 
excommunication, fulminated against him for the sacrilegious 
murder of Comyn, he was not daunted. It is said, (in an 
account of so romantic a career the most romantic incident 
can hardly be out of place,) that one night, as he was re¬ 
volving in his mind the disasters which had befallen' him 
and his adherents, and the chances of future success, his 
attention was attracted to a spider, who w r as making 
strenuous efforts to attach its web to a beam apparently 
out of its reach. Six times the persevering insect fell to 
the ground, but at the seventh attempt it had more success, 
it reached the beam, and completed its web in safety. 
Bruce recollected that he, too, had met with six failures, 
and, as the attempt which he w r as meditating would be the 
seventh, he looked on the spider’s triumph as an omen of 
his own. Even in ages less infected by superstition omens 


A.D. 

1296— 

1307. 


122 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1296— 

1307. 


have often begotten success by the confidence which they 
have inspired, and have perhaps still more frequently ob¬ 
tained with the populace the credit really due to wisdom 
and valour; so that it is not strange, since history has 
preserved few more brilliant series of actions than those 
which marked Bruce’s subsequent career, that the little 
insect who thus heralded them to his own adventurous 
mind was long regarded with reverence by his nation, with 
affection by his posterity. 

With the return of spring he too returned to Scotland, 
gained the advantage in several trifling skirmishes, recovered 
some places of small importance, and in May avenged the 
defeat he had sustained from De Valence in the preceding 
year by completely routing him on Loudon Hill. 

Edward perceived that his lieutenants were unequal to 
the contest, and was hastening towards the borders to as¬ 
sume the command of his army himself; when the fatigue 
of the journey, joined to the anxiety caused by Bruce’s 
success, brought on a fever which, in his enfeebled state, 
speedily proved fatal; and on the 7th of July he died, near 
Carlisle, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty- 
fifth of his reign. 

Among the rulers of mankind who have won for them¬ 
selves a conspicuous and honourable place in the history 
of their country Edward has no superior, and scarcely an 
equal. Personal prowess, which in the other heroes of that 
urdettered age makes up the greater part, or the whole of 
their renown, though so eminent in him that no knight in 
Europe could encounter him on equal terms, was yet in him 
so overshadowed by more valuable qualities as to be scarcely 
entitled to notice, and the invincible knight is lost in the 
consummate general, the wise lawgiver, the far-sighted 
statesman. It is not reasonable to judge by the same 
standard the private individual secure in peaceful retirement, 
and the monarch surrounded by greater temptations and bur¬ 
dened with heavier responsibilities. It must be admitted 
that Edward was ambitious, and that in the pursuit of the 
objects of his ambition he did not always regard either the 
strict requirements of justice, or the gentler voice of the 
equally kingly quality of mercy: but it was no personal 
vulgar ambition that prompted his attacks upon Wales and 
Scotland, but a judicious perception of the advantages to be 
derived, not by England alone, but by the invaded countries 


EDWARD I. 


123 


XIV.] 

also from their union into one kingdom. He was ambitious, 
not so much of being the conqueror as of being the bene¬ 
factor of the whole island; and the instant that his supre¬ 
macy was acknowledged he began to impart to his new ter¬ 
ritories the blessings 'which his legislative wisdom had 
already secured to his hereditary kingdom. It may be 
added that no one’s ambition was ever more judiciously 
regulated by his power ; he failed in nothing that he under¬ 
took. He so entirelv subdued Scotland once that he was 

*> 

acknowledged as its king, and its subsequent re-establish¬ 
ment as an independent state was owing to his death, and 
to the weakness of his successor; while the desirableness of 
the conquest for both countries is amply proved by the bene¬ 
fits that have accrued to both since, and, very greatly, in 
consequence of their union. As a king he was not disin¬ 
clined to extend his power beyond the limits which the con¬ 
stitution, now beginning to be understood and properly 
valued, permitted ; but his statesmanlike wisdom taught 
him moderation even in his prosecution of this design, and 
no one ever receded with more dignity from pretensions 
which he found it perilous to enforce, or ever showed more 
clearly by his subsequent conduct that his renunciation of 
them was complete. Though there had been before his 
time, as we have seen, a parliament containing representa¬ 
tives from the towns, yet he may more justly than any one 
else be considered the real founder of our parliament, as 
having been the first to proclaim the right of every class to 
be consulted on the common interests, and not to be taxed 
without their own consent: a declaration which evinces 
sagacity to discern the inevitable course of events, and a 
resolute liberality of policy in thus binding himself and his 
successors for ever to an observance of rights so formally 
acknowledged, which proves him far in advance of his age, 
not only as a statesman, but as a patriot. The object for 
which Hampden contended was no other than the practical 
application of the principle laid down by this far-sighted 
and benevolent monarch. Kings are subjected to a more 
rigid tribunal than ordinary men from the fact of their con¬ 
spicuous position making all their actions both more noto¬ 
rious and more important; and we have no right to expect 
that faultlessness in a sovereign which we know it to be 
vain to look for in others; but as long as the equitable rule 
prevails of balancing men’s virtues against their faults, and 


A.D. 

1296 — 

1307 - 


124 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.D. of looking at the general results of their conduct, so long 
Jo!!- will the splendid and universal abilities of Edward the First, 
'* and the great and lasting benefit which his country has de¬ 
rived from them secure him a leading, if not the very first 
place among those monarchs who have left an example to be 
revered by their countrymen and imitated by their suc¬ 
cessors. 


CHAPTER XV. 

EDWARD II. 

1307— Edward the Second at his accession was twenty-three years 
1327 . of age; his father had early endeavoured to teach him the 
principles and theory of government by leaving him as the 
nominal regent of the kingdom during his absence in Flan¬ 
ders, and giving him the wisest statesmen in the kingdom 
for his counsellors and guides. Unhappily the young 
prince was both giddy and obstinate; preferring the society 
of those worthless parasites, of whom a court is too fruitful, 
to their graver but necessary lessons; and his first actions 
as a king showed that his increased responsibilities had not 
taught him any greater degree of reflection or resolution. 
While a boy he had formed an attachment for a young 
Gascon, named Piers Gaveston, a man possessed of many of 
the accomplishments of the age, but thoughtless and un¬ 
principled ; and his father saw so clearly the extent and the 
mischievous effect of his favourite’s influence over him that 
he banished him from the kingdom ; and on his deathbed 
the last injunctions which he laid upon his son were to 
carry his bones with him into Scotland, never to rest till 
he had subdued it, and never to recal Gaveston. 

Both these commands were disregarded. Edward did indeed 
advance with his army a short distance into Scotland, but re¬ 
tired again without striking a blow; and, having dismissed all 
his father’s most trusted ministers, he recalled Gaveston, 
presented him with the greater part of the treasure which 
the old king had bequeathed for the support of a body of 
knights still warring against the infidels in the Ploly Land, 
gave him his own niece in marriage and the earidom of 
Cornwall, which had hitherto been reserved for the royal 



EDWARD II. 


125 


XV.] 

family ; and, when he himself went over to France to marry a.d. 
the princess Isabella, accounted the most beautiful woman 1307 — 
of her time, he passed over all the native nobles, and ap- 1327 ' 
pointed him guardian of the kingdom. 

Gaveston did not bear his honours with meekness, but, 
encouraged by the submissiveness with which his master 
bore his imperious domination, he treated the barons with 
such insolence that they soon conspired against him, com¬ 
pelled the king to banish him, and made Gaveston himself 
take an oath never to return to the kingdom. They were 
pacified for a moment by their triumph ; but their hostility 
was reawakened more fiercely than ever when they found 
that he had been appointed viceroy of Ireland, and when 
shortly afterwards his weak master procured for him from the 
pope a dispensation from the oath which he had taken never 
to return, recalled him, and went to Chester to meet him, 
showing the most indecent and childish joy at the recovery 
of his favourite. 

Gaveston w r as not without abilities : he had repressed a 
rising insurrection in Ireland with resolution and success ; 
but he had not learnt prudence or moderation, and taking 
his recal as a proof, not of the weakness of the king, but of 
the impotence of his enemies, he carried his arrogance to 
such a pitch that they again rose, wrested all the authority 
of the kingdom for a while out of Edward’s bands, com¬ 
pelled him to consent to a string of ordinances framed by a 
committee of their own appointment, banished Gaveston 
a second time, and, when the king a second time recalled 
him, they rose in arms, besieged both king and favourite, 
seized the latter, and put him to death close to Guy’s Cliff', 
in Warwickshire. Edward, furious at his loss, assembled June 
an army to revenge him, and solicited the aid of the king of 
France for the same purpose; but his more prudent kins¬ 
man counselled peace, and the birth of an heir gratified him 
so much that for a time he forgot his indignation against his 
barons, admitted their apologies, and granted them a general 
pardon. 

It was more than ever necessary for all parties in England 
to be united, if they would not see Scotland wholly wrested 
from their grasp. By a happy mixture of enterprise and 
prudence Bruce had gradually recovered nearly all the 
strongholds won bv the first Edward and his generals, and 
his brother, Edward Bruce, was besieging Stirling, the 


126 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. governor of which town had agreed to surrender it, if he 
I.I07 were not relieved by the day of St. John the Baptist, in 
13 -7. p reserve this, almost the last fortress remaining 

to him in the whole country, the king of England collected 
a vast army, the largest perhaps that ever was ranged at one 
time beneath the British banner, and hastened to the aid ot 
his beleaguered general. 

Bruce had been greatly concerned at the agreement wliich 
his brother had made with the governor of Stirling, as giving 
time for the collection of this vast armament, which it was 
impossible for him to equal. His utmost exertions could 
not assemble more than one-third of their numbers to en¬ 
counter the English ; and the inferiority of their equipments 
was greater than even the disparity of numbers. Of cavalry 
he had scarcely any, and the Scottish cross-bowmen were no 
match for the southern archers, each of whom, according to 
the national proverb, carried the lives of twenty-four Scots 
in his belt. Still he did not despair. He had learnt from 
the recent battle of Coutray, where the French chivalry had 
fled before the Flemings, that infantry could resist cavalry 
with success, and he prepared to aid his Carrick spearmen, 
on whom he placed his main reliance, by all the resources 
of military skill. His right flank was protected by the 
brook or burn of Bannock, which has given its name to the 
field of battle. Some of the ground in front was unfavour¬ 
able for the hostile cavalry, being marshy and full of trees ; 
and, where it offered a firmer footing, he caused deep pits to 
be dug, till the plain was like a honeycomb, and covered the 
surface of these pits with wattles and turf, strong enough 
to bear infantry, but sure to give way under the weight of 
a mailed horseman. On the 23rd of June the English host 
came in sight of the scanty battalions of the enemy. The 
morrow was the day appointed to decide the fate of Stirling; 
but on that evening more than one skirmish took place, 
which gave token to both parties of the event of the coming 
day. Clifford, with 800 horse, was despatched to throw a 
reinforcement into Stirling, but was beaten back by Ran¬ 
dolph, with scarce 200 infantry, so speedily that Douglas, 
who, when he saw his little band surrounded, had extorted 
from Bruce permission to go to his rescue, while yet at a 
distance saw him in possession of the field, and checked his 
men that he might not appear a sharer in a triumph to 
which he had not contributed. More famous still was the 


EDWARD II. 


127 


XV.] 

encounter in which Bruce himself was concerned. Clad in 
complete steel, but with no weapon save a battle-axe, he 
was riding in front of his men on a small palfrey, when an 
English knight of high reputation, sir Henry de Bohun, 
thinking he saw an opportunity of terminating the war at 
one blow, couched his lance and spurred his war-horse to 
the charge to crush the king by his superior weight. The 
king seemed prepared to abide the onset; but, as the knight 
came up, he turned his palfrey aside, avoided the blow 
aimed at him, and, rising in* his stirrups, struck his assailant 
so heavy a stroke with his battle-axe, that it shivered in his 
hand as De Bohun fell dead at his feet. The English were 
as much dismayed as the Scots were encouraged by the 
sight; and with these feelings both sides prepared for the 
coming contest. The next morning, as the English were 
advancing to the attack, Edward, who was at the head of his 
men, saw the Scottish battalions with one consent bend 
their knees to the ground. “See, Umfraville,” said he to 
one of his most renowned knights, “ the rebels yield; they 
kneel for mercy.” “ It is from Heaven,” replied Umfraville, 
“ and not from your grace that they crave it; on that field 
they will conquer or die.” And in truth it was to Heaven 
that they knelt, as the abbot Maurice walked barefooted 
along their line, giving his solemn benediction to them, and 
offering earnest prayers for their success. The national 
poet 3 , whose chosen theme is the glory of the Bruce, repre¬ 
sents him as encouraging his men to put forth all their 
might by the reflection that the right was on their side, 
and that for the right God Himself would fight with them ; 
that if they gained the victory, so great would be the booty, 
that the poorest of them all should be a rich man for the 
rest of his life. Above all, that they were about to strive 

3 Barbour's Bruce, xii. p. 131. 

“ We for our lyvys. 

And for our cliildre, and for our wyvis, 

And for our fredome, and for our land, 

As strengeit into battle stand.” 

The classical reader will compare the exhortation to the Greeks before the 
battle of Salamis, as recorded by another poet. 

TTUldfS 'EWjji/ojj/ lte, 
iXiudtpovTE Trurp'iS’, kXtvtitpovTt ci 
TTuloas, yi/ycuvas, t)tu>v Tt iruTpipiuv tSii, 

OtjKas Tt TrpoyoiKuv' vuv uirtp ttuvtwv aytov. 

It is hardlv likely that the Scottish bard had read TEsch vlus, but patriotism and 
courage belong to every country, and suggest similar topics to all brave men. 


A.D. 

1307— 

1327. 


A.D. 

1307— 

1327. 


128 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

not for their own lives only, but for their children, their 
wives, their freedom, and their native land. And doubtless 
the ideas thus poetically put in the king’s mouth occurred 
to many a thoughtful mind, fired many a gallant spirit, and 
nerved many a mighty hand. Onward came the English; 
and, when they arrived within bow r shot, the archers sent 
forth such a storm of arrows as seemed likely to decide the 
strife at once, when Edward Bruce and the marshal sir 
Robert Keith, at the head of the small body of cavalry who 
had been reserved for that purpose, charged them on the 
flank, and threw them into disorder. They were neither 
accustomed to, nor equipped for, close combat; and were 
slaughtered almost without resistance. The knights and 
men-at-arms sought to repair the disaster by making a 
furious attack on the Scottish front, but the undermined 
ground gave way beneath their advance, and man and horse 
floundered helplessly among the pitfalls prepared for their 
reception. Still the English leaders stubbornly maintained 
the fight; Gloucester, and Pembroke, and Clifford, and 
De Argentine, and Edward himself, among whose faults 
cowardice had no place, though surprised, still undismayed, 
were exerting themselves to rally their forces, when the 
Scottish camp-followers, whom Bruce had sent with the 
baggage to the rear, unable to restrain their anxiety, ap¬ 
peared on the rising ground, still called the Gillies’ (or the 
Servants’) Hill, and, at the distance, bore the appearance of 
a strong reinforcement. At the sight of them a panic 
seized nearly the whole of the English army; they fled in 
disorder, and no longer made any resistance to their ene¬ 
mies, who pursued them with relentless slaughter. Numbers 
perished by the swmrd; numbers in blind terror sought to 
flee across the Eorth, and were drowned in its waters, till 
the amount of the slain surpassed that of the whole Scottish 
army. Edward fled to Dunbar, closely pursued by Douglas, 
and from thence escaped to England, where still more ter¬ 
rible disasters, famine, and pestilence were beginning to 
cause great ravages among his subjects. 

Meantime Bruce, now fully established on his throne, 
recovered Berwick, the last Scotch town remaining in 
Edward’s hands, overran the English frontier, and ravaged 
all the northern counties till the war between the two 
kingdoms was terminated for a time by a truce for two 
years. 


EDWARD II. 


129 


XV.] 

Edward, with a reputation and authority greatly damaged a.d. 
by his defeat, again provoked the indignation of his barons 1 ?°2 — 
by his selection of another favourite, Hugh le Hespenser, in 
no respect more acceptable to them than Gaveston, and 
more rapacious and oppressive than that unfortunate man. 

The barons again took arms, and compelled the king to 
banish both him and his father, an aged knight, nearly ninety 
years of age but they became so elated by their success 
as to treat, not only the king, but the queen also with an 
insolence that raised a feeling in Edward’s favour, of which 
he took advantage to recal the Hespensers, and to levy an 
army with which he attacked them. Many submitted and 
surrendered their castles to him; but Lancaster, the most 
powerful of the whole body, and nearly connected with the 
royal family, collected a force to resist him ; he was, how¬ 
ever, defeated and taken prisoner, and Edward, who had 
never forgotten the principal share which he had borne in 
Gaveston’s execution, put him to death with the same in- 1322. 
dignities that had been inflicted on his former favourite. 

The unhappy king, however, had an enemy nearer home. 

His wife’s affections had been alienated from him, and as 
her brother, the new king of Erance, Charles le Bel, sum¬ 
moned him to that country to do homage for Guienne, she 
persuaded him to allow her to cross the Channel to nego¬ 
tiate with her brother, and to resign Guienne to the prince 
of Wales, a boy of thirteen, who might go and do homage 
to his uncle with less danger than Edward apprehended to 
himself. As soon as she reached France she was joined by 
Roger Mortimer, a young Welsh baron, of whom she had 
become enamoured, and by his means she commenced a cor¬ 
respondence with the disaffected barons. After a time she 
declared open war against her husband, and in September, 

1326, landed in Suffolk at the head of 3000 men, declaring 
that her object was to deliver England from the tyranny of 
the Despensers. Edward, after trying in vain to raise an 
army, fled with his favourites, and endeavoured to cross the 
sea to Ireland, but the wind was unfavourable; both the 
Despensers were taken prisoners and executed; and, in a 
parliament summoned by Isabella to meet at Westminster, 
the king was formally deposed; his son w T as proclaimed in Jan., 
his stead, and shortly after crowned at Westminster. But la2 7* 
the captive condition of Edward began to create a sympathy 
for his cause, which was heightened by men’s disgust at the 

K 


130 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 


[ 


CH. 


a.t>. unnatural conduct of bis faithless wife, and the insolence of 
Mortimer, who now ruled the kingdom without a rival. 

’ There seemed a danger of the reaction ripening into a plot 
for his deliverance, and the queen, to complete her guilt, 
resolved to take the surest measures to prevent a result 
which she had so much reason to dread. As the earl of 
Leicester, to whose custody Edward had originally been 
committed, treated him with kindness, he was transferred 
to the care of two men, named Gurney and Maltravers, who, 
though of knightly rank, were of a cruel, ruffianly nature, 
who conducted him to Berkeley Castle, and, after trying in 
vain the effect of every description of ill treatment, insult, 
Sept., and privation, murdered him in the most inhuman manner. 
1327. was [ R forty-third year of his age; and, besides his 
successor, Edward, he left another son, John, who died 
young, and two daughters, one of whom, Jane, was after¬ 
wards married to David Bruce, the king of Scotland, and 
the other to the count of Gueldres. 

Eew kings have ever reigned more unhappily, none have 
died so miserably as Edward II.; and though he was 
neither licentious nor cruel, there is no one whose misfor¬ 
tunes may be more clearly traced to his own conduct. He 
succeeded to a throne which all his people were disposed to 
venerate from a recollection of his great father : but he first 
alienated their affections by his exclusive partiality for 
worthless favourites, and then excited their contempt by the 
weak-minded obstinacy with which he persevered in it, and 
the faithlessness with which he broke all his promises to 
discard them. The disaster at Bannockburn impaired his 
authority; but severe as the loss sustained in that defeat 
was, it was not too great to retrieve, and would only have 
stimulated his father or his son to a vigorous resolution to 
avenge it; but he had gradually become incapable of a 
manly effort, and the expeditions which he made against the 
Scots in the latter part of his reign only brought him addi¬ 
tional discomfiture and dishonour. In an age like our own, 
when the affairs of government are carried on by responsible 
ministers, the personal character of the sovereign is of less 
importance, and indeed is often not so easily nor so clearly 
ascertained ; but in the rude times of which we are speak¬ 
ing, vrheu the king was his own minister and his own 
general, every feeling and action of his was carefully scru¬ 
tinized, and the folly and imbecility which might only have 


EDWARD III. 


131 


XVI.] 

moved ridicule, or perhaps pity in a private individual, be- a.d. 
came in the monarch a source* of misery to his subjects, of 13 °7— 
degradation and destruction to himself. 132 7* 


CHAPTER XVI. 

EDWARD III. 

It was in September, 1327, that Edward II. was murdered, 1327— 
but he had ceased to reign in the beginning of the same 1341. 
year. His son and successor was only fourteen years 
of age, and a council of regency was appointed, the earl of 
Lancaster being named as his especial guardian, but the real 
power of the kingdom was in the hands of his mother and 
her paramour Mortimer. He had hardly been crowned 
when war broke out with Scotland. Bruce had availed 
himself of the weakness of England, produced by the di¬ 
visions of the late reign, and had become so powerful that 
at last his authority as king had been fully recognized by 
Edward II., and by the pope; and the foundations of his 
power were greatly strengthened by the birth of a son, which 
took place a few years earlier than the time of which we are 
speaking. Now, thinking that the minority of the young 
king, and the increasing unpopularity of Isabella and 
Mortimer, presented a favourable opportunity, he renewed 
his quarrel with England on somewhat trivial grounds, and 
sent Randolph and Douglas with a considerable army to 
ravage the northern counties. The regency assembled a 
force of double their numbers to repel them, of which 
Edward himself took the command; but so rapid were the 
motions of the Scots, that for a long time it was impossible 
to overtake them, or even to ascertain where they were, 
though they were desolating the whole district with fire 
and sword ; at last Edward offered knighthood and a large 
annuity to any one who should bring him word where the 
enemy was to be found, and the Scottish leaders released a 
prisoner to bear him the wished-for information. He found 
them on the banks of the Wear, posted so strongly that, in 
spite of his superiority of numbers, he could not venture to 
attack them; and for many days he pursued them without ever 

K 2 



132 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



a.d. finding an opportunity of bringing them to a battle. He 

1327 sen t them a formal challenge to meet him in the open plain; 

1 ’ >41 ' but Randolph replied that he never took counsel of an enemy. 
His presence in their front, however, did not check their 
spirit of enterprise, which on one occasion nearly proved 
fatal to himself. Douglas, the bravest of all the heroes who 
fought under Bruce’s banner, and his king’s most honoured 
friend, one night, at the head of a small body of picked men, 
forced his way into the English camp, where, it would seem, 
the watch was but indifferently kept, penetrated even to the 
king’s tent, and cut the cords with his own hand, shouting 
liis war-cry and slaying all who ventured to encounter 
bim; happily, before he could reach the king himself, the 
tumult awakened some of his attendants, who gallantly 
fought and fell to secure their master’s safety, and Douglas 
was baulked of the great prize which he had hoped to secure, 
and was forced to retreat. Soon afterwards the whole army 
retired to their own country, and, at the beginning of the 
next year, Mortimer, though not included in the council of 
regency, made peace with Bruce, in which every claim of 
England to superiority over Scotland was resigned; it was 
agreed that the infant prince, David Bruce, should marry 
Edward’s sister Jane, and that Bruce should pay 30,000 
marks as a recompense for the damage done in the late 
invasion. The children were at once married at Berwick, and 
20,000 marks were paid, which Isabella and Mortimer appro¬ 
priated to themselves, to the great offence of the kingdom. 

The peace itself, which was generally looked upon as dis¬ 
honourable to the nation, added greatly to the detestation in 
which they were held; the nobles began to conspire against 
them, and, to strike terror into them, Mortimer brought the 
earl of Kent, the king’s uncle, to trial for treason, and com¬ 
pelled Edward to consent to his execution. His success in 
this matter only made him more insolent, and when Edward 
was eighteen, the age at which English princes attained their 
majority, he resolved to bear his domination no longer. 
The nobles, to whom he confided his determination, gladly 
seconded it by every means in their power. The queen 
dowager and Mortimer were seized at Nottingham; he was 
Nov., condemned without a trial by the parliament, and hanged at 
1330. Tyburn; and she was confined to her manor of Risings, near 
London, where she passed the remaining twenty-seven years 
of her life in privacy and contempt. 


EDWARD III. 


133 


XVI.] 

Even before his accession to the throne Edward had been 
affianced to Philippa, daughter of the count of Hainault; in 
the year 1328 he had married her, and the next year she 
had borne him a son, celebrated afterwards throughout 
Europe as the Black Prince. On his assuming the reins of 
government, he found that though more than half a century 
had elapsed since the accession of his grandfather, neither 
the lapse of time, nor the wise regulations of the first 
Edward, had done more to improve the dispositions, or to 
increase the tranquillity of his people, than the misgovern- 
ment of the second had effected in brutalizing them, and in 
sowing anew the seeds of disorder. Bobberies and outrages 
of every kind had become as common as in the time of John 
and Henry, and the perpetrators were still protected by 
powerful barons, and were often indeed their agents in 
executing revenge upon their enemies. Like his grand¬ 
father, Edward set himself resolutely to work to repress 
these atrocities, inflicting severe punishment on the guilty, 
and upholding the majesty of the law and the authority of 
the judges with such resolute vigour, that he soon restored 
peace and security as far as they were capable of being 
established among a people in whom the principles of rapine 
were so deeply rooted that even the sufferers, while smart¬ 
ing under the personal injury, hardly looked upon it as a 
crime. 

Bobert Bruce had died in 1329, and his son David was 
a child only seven years old ; Edward Balliol, the son of 
that John Balliol to whom the crown of Scotland had been 
originally adjudged, thought it a good opportunity to assert 
his claims to his inheritance, in which he was encouraged by 
some of the English nobles who had possessed estates in 
Scotland, of which they had been deprived in the late wars, 
but which Bruce, in the treaty of Northampton, had engaged 
to restore to them. This agreement, however, he had delayed 
to perform, and Bandolph, the guardian of the young king, 
believing on good grounds that the nobles in question were 
likely to prefer the interests of England to those of Scotland, 
positively refused to fulfil it. Edward hesitated to break 
the peace for such a cause, but connived at an expedition to 
back Balliol’s claim sailing from the Humber. Bandolph, 
while preparing to oppose it, died after a short illness, and 
the regency fell into the hands of the earl of Mar, a cousin 
of the young king, but a man of very moderate abilities, and 


A/D. 

1327— 

1341. 


134 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. wholly destitute of energy or presence of mind. He, how- 
1327 — ever, had not much difficulty in collecting a force of 30,000 
men by the time that Balliol landed on the shores of the 
Frith of Forth. Balliol expected to be joined by a large 
party in Scotland, but those who actually did come over to 
him were few in number and not such as were able to bring 
any large bodies of retainers to his standard. When all 
were united they did not amount to above a tenth of the num¬ 
ber of the royal forces, and their situation seemed desperate. 
It would have proved so in ordinary circumstances, but 
the very hopelessness of Ins situation inspired Balliol with 
resolution which Mar’s incapacity crowned with success. 
He surprised the hostile army at midnight on Dupplin 
Moor, and routed them with immense slaughter. His 
victory speedily swelled his ranks, he seized Perth, and in a 
little more than six weeks from the day that he landed, he 

Sept., was crowned at Scone by the bishop of Dunkeld. To secure 

1332. the royal dignity which he had so easily acquired, he now 
openly sought the alliance of Edward, agreeing to renew the 
dependence of Scotland upon England, to serve the king of 
England in all his wars, and to cede to him Berwick and 
other important territories on the frontier. But scarcely 
had he concluded this agreement, when he in his turn was 
surprised by Randolph’s son, the young earl of Moray, at 
Annan, defeated, and expelled from his kingdom within three 
months of his coronation. 

Edward now marched to the north to assist his dis¬ 
tressed ally, and laid siege to Berwick, which Balliol had 
not surrendered to him before his expulsion. It was gal¬ 
lantly defended; and sir Archibald Douglas, who was now 
regent, for the earl of Mar had been slain in the surprise 
on Dupplin Moor, resolved to risk a fight to relieve it. On 
the 19th of July, 1333, Edward, for the first time, com¬ 
manded his army in a pitched battle. He drew up his men 
on Halidon Hill, Douglas occupied an opposite height, and 
a morass lay between the hostile camps. As the king of 
England remained firm in his advantageous position, Douglas 
advanced to the attack. 'While descending the hill, and 
crossing the bog, his troops were exposed to the aim of the 
English archers, without the possibility of retaliating, and 
when they came to close conflict they were already in 
disorder, and afforded an easy victory to their enemies, who 
calmly awaited their approach. On this day the slaughter 


EDWARD III. 


135 


XVI.] 

of Bannockburn was nearly avenged. Thirty thousand a.d. 
Scots, with numbers of the most valiant and powerful nobles 1327- 
in the kingdom, including the regent himself, were slain. 1341, 
The victory was followed by the submission of the whole 
kingdom to Balliol, with the exception of four or five for¬ 
tresses, still held by adherents of king David, and the 
general opinion was that all possibility of resistance to 
English influence was extinguished for ever. 

And perhaps this might have been the case had Balliol 
« possessed, we need not say an exalted courage, but merely 
spirit enough to value his own dignity, and the independ¬ 
ence of his country; but instead of showing such a dis¬ 
position, his first act was to dismember his kingdom by 
ceding all the southern counties to Edward; and the in¬ 
dignation which this conduct excited in Scotchmen of every 
rank kept alive Bruce’s party, who maintained a slow and 
comparatively uneventful warfare against Balliol and the 
English with gradually increasing success. 

After some years Edward’s attention was diverted from 
Scotch affairs by an event which opened a new field for his 
ambition on the Continent. Charles IV., king of France, 
had died in 1328, without male issue, and Edward claimed 
the throne as the grandson of Charles’s father, Philip IV., 
by his daughter Isabella, in opposition to Philip of Valois, 
the grandson of the preceding king, Philip III., by his 
younger son, Charles of Valois. As it had been previously 
decided that the Salic law prevailed in France, according to 
which no female could inherit the throne, the peers, to 
whom the claims of the rival princes were submitted, una¬ 
nimously decided in favour of Philip, who was crowned king 
of France; and Edward, after some demur, acknowledged 
his title by consenting to do him homage as his liege lord 
for the duchy of Guienne, which he inherited in the French 
territory. A more complete abandonment of his own pre¬ 
tensions could not be imagined; and no one expected there 
would ever be an attempt to revive them, when, in 1337, 
.Robert of Artois, a man nearly related to the French royal 
family, but of infamous character, being outlawed by Philip 
for his crimes, fled to Edward, and easily awakened in his 
ambitious mind an inclination to assert by force of arms 
those pretensions, of which more equitable and peaceful 
proceedings had served only to establish the futility. 

The protection which Philip had granted to David Bruce, 



136 HISTOFvY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

A.n. who was still residing in Prance with his youthful queen, 
1:^27— was a deep offence to Edward, and was probably not with- 
1341 ' out its influence on his mind, when he determined to attack 
him. Aware, however, of the magnitude of the undertaking, 
for Erance had increased m power and resources during 
the last century much more than England, he proceeded 
to contract as many alliances as possible on the Continent, 
with Louis, the emperor of Germany, who appointed him 
vicar of the empire, so as to give him authority over the 
German princes; with his own father-in-law, the count of* 
Hainault, a warrior of great military reputation ; with other 
princes of minor importance on the borders of Erance; and 
with James von Artaveld, a citizen of Ghent, originally a 
brewer, who had raised so strong a democratic faction in 
all the principalities of Elanders, that at this time he was 
the virtual ruler of that opulent country, the earl of Elanders 
being reduced to a state of complete insignificance, and 
driven into Erance. Philip made similar preparations on 
his side. Among his supporters he numbered the pope, 
the king of Bohemia, the duke of Austria, the duke of 
Brittany (that great province being still independent of 
Erance), and other rulers of smaller states, so that almost 
the whole of the north of Europe was arrayed on one side 
or on the other. 

Edward, in order to carry on the war on a scale suited 
to its importance, appealed to his parliament for extra¬ 
ordinary supplies; and, though that body had formerly 
deliberated on Philip’s claim of homage for Guienne, and 
had decided that the king was bound to do fealty to him 
for that province as his liege lord, it now with equal una¬ 
nimity approved of the war, the commons begging him to 
pursue his right, and promising him all support in the 
prosecution of it. 

In July, 1338, he sailed from the Orwell, and landed at 
Antwerp, with an army of 50,000 men; but all this mighty 
preparation terminated in an unsuccessful and inglorious 
campaign. To conciliate the German princes Edward laid 
siege to Cambray, a city which belonged of right to the 
empire, but which was held by Philip at that time. As it 
proved too strong to be carried by a sudden assault, he raised 
the siege, and marched across the frontier of Erance, when 
he found that some of his allies who held fiefs of that 
kingdom, and among them his own brother-in-law, the count 


EDWARD III. 


187 


* XVT.] 

of Hainault, who had lately succeeded his father, quitted a.d. 
his standard, because they would not invade the territories J 327— 
of their liege lord, thus showing how idle they esteemed 1341 ' 
Edward’s pretensions. However, he proceeded onwards. 

Philip also, with nearly double his numbers, marched 
towards the frontier, and at Vironfosse the two armies con¬ 
fronted each other. Heralds were sent to and fro between 
the kings, and with much solemnity the following Eriday 
was fixed for the battle; but, before the day came, the 
Erench councillors had represented to their king so forcibly 
the inequality of the risk to be encountered by Edward 
and himself, since, as the king of England had the sea open 
to him, he, if defeated, would only lose his army, while 
Philip, if beaten, would be in danger of losing his kingdom, 
that, though unwillingly, he yielded to their reasonings, 
and drew off his army ; and the only war-cry raised on that 
day by the Erench soldiers was excited by a hare, which 
ran along their front. The foremost ranks raised a shout, 
and those in the rear thinking the battle had commenced, 
armed in haste, and pressed forwards. The princes knighted 
some young aspirants after fame; but when they spurred 
to the front, and reached the field long after their only 
enemy, the hare, had disappeared, the shouts were changed 
into general laughter, and they were greeted with the title 
of Knights of the Hare, which they kept till their death. 

It marks the feelings and state of knowledge of the age 
that Philip, though an accomplished and able prince, was 
partly influenced in his resolution to avoid a battle by a 
letter, which he received from Robert, king of Sicily, who 
was greatly devoted to the study of astrology, and who 
now wrote to him to say that he had often cast both his 
and Edward’s nativity, and had learnt that, if ever he 
engaged in battle when Edward himself was present, he 
w r ould surely be defeated, and therefore he conjured him 
to avoid a conflict, of which the issue must inevitably be 
fatal to him. 

Neither king nor parliament, however, were daunted at 
the ineffectual result of this campaign. The parliament, 
indeed, availed themselves of the king’s necessities to exact 
the concession of some valuable privileges, and the abolition 
or diminution of some abuses, but in return they were 
more liberal of their grants than before. Edward, further 
to encourage his allies, now assumed the title of king of 


A.D. 

1327- 

1341. 


138 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

France, and quartered the lilies on his shield, and was 
preparing to renew his invasion, when he heard that Philip 
had stationed a large fleet in the harbour of Sluys, with a 
view to intercept him on his passage. From the beginning 
of his reign Edward had been fond of asserting the right 
of England to the sovereignty of the seas, and he was 
determined, now that an opportunity offered, to prove that 
right by action. With all his efforts, however, he could 
scarcely collect more than half the number of ships arrayed 
against him; hat he set sail, determined to force his way 
to the enemy’s coast, in spite of all obstacles. The French 
fleet was so numerous, that, according to Froissart’s com¬ 
parison, its masts looked like a wood. Four hundred 
ships, many of them manned by Genoese sailors, who had 
already acquired a high maritime reputation, and others 
by Normans, who had never entirely disused the piratical 
habits by which they had originally won the lands that 
they possessed, were awaiting his approach, while he had 
only 240 4 . Without a moment’s delay he attacked them. 
His archers, with which every ship was furnished, cleared 
the French decks, the men-at-arms boarded them, and in a 
short time above three-fourths of the whole fleet were in 
the hands of the English, and it was only the darkness of 
the night that enabled the remainder to escape into their 
harbours. Nearly 30,000 French fell in the battle ; and 
the disaster was so great, and apparently so irretrievable, 
that none of his councillors dared to reveal it to Philip. 
He learnt it at last from the hint of the court fool, who 
told him that he looked upon the English as cowards; and 
when the gratified monarch asked what they had done to 
deserve such a stigma, replied that they would not have had 
the courage to leap into the sea, and be drowned, as the 
French had done, rather than submit to be prisoners when 
they had lost all their ships. 

Edward, on his landing, returned public thanks to God 
for his victory in the church of Ardembourg, and sent orders 
to England for a national thanksgiving. He now laid siege 
to Tournay, one of the most opulent cities in Flanders, but 
at that time occupied by a French garrison. Philip watched 
his operations with an army superior in numbers, but still 
maintained his resolution of not affording him the chance of 


4 Froissart says that the French were to the English as four to one. 


EDWARD TIT. 


139 


XVI.] 

a pitched battle ; and this second campaign seemed likely to a.d. 
terminate in the same uneventful manner as the first, when, 1327- 
by the mediation of Jane, counteas of Hainault, who was 1 * ' 
Philip’s sister, and the mother of queen Philippa of England, 
a truce was made, and negotiations were opened with a view 
to a permanent peace. 

In spite of his naval victory, Edward had hitherto been 
completely baffled in his attempts upon Prance ; and the 
results appeared for a while to endanger his authority over 
his own subjects. Though the parliament had granted the 
taxes which he required, it was not possible to levy them 
with the celerity which he expected; and, as he returned in 
very bad humour with the issue of his expedition, he was 
inclined to wreak his displeasure on the first persons he 
could find on whom to lay the blame of his disappointment. 

The minister to whom the charge of collecting the new 
taxes had been entrusted was Stratford, the primate, and the 
treasurer was the bishop of Lichfield. Edward, on his re¬ 
turn, threw the treasurer into prison, and proceeded to take 
steps to punish the archbishop also, with which view he 
abstained from summoning him to the parliament which he 
convened. But the clergy had long since claimed an ex¬ 
emption from all secular jurisdiction, which amounted in 
effect to an impunity for all offences ; and the archbishop 
now ventured to threaten with excommunication all who 
on any pretence should treat any ecclesiastic with violence ; 
and, in a letter to the king himself, openly pronounced the 
kingly authority to be inferior to that of the priesthood. 
Edward was only the more incensed at his insolence: but 
the whole body of the clergy combined against him in 
defence of their prelates; and at last, as the archbishop 
abated his pretensions, and requested leave to prove his 
innocence before his peers by submitting to a regular trial, 
the king, sensible, perhaps, that there was no real ground for 
the charges which he had brought against him, received him 
again into favour. 

But the settlement of this dispute was not the end of his 
difficulties. The supplies which the parliament had granted, 
unusually great though they were, were wholly inadequate 
to meet the vast expenses of his French expeditions; and, 
following the course they had constantly pursued of late 
years, they made the additional subsidies which he demanded 
the price of further concessions on his part. He was com- 



140 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. pelled to grant, that for the future no noble should be pu- 
1 3-7— nished except by sentence of his peers in parliament, and to 
consent to an act which established the principle of the 
responsibility of his ministers to parliament, and which gave 
that body a direct control over their appointment, and over 
their conduct in office. His assent to these measures was 
extorted from him most unwillingly. His ministers liked 
the last of them even less than he did himself; and though 
he ratified them formally now, he at the same time framed a 
secret protest against them, in which he declared, that, 
though he now dissembled his disapprobation of what he 
absurdly enough called an illegal measure (as if an act, 
passed by all the members of a legislative body, could possi¬ 
bly be illegal), he intended to revoke it as soon as possible: 
and two years afterwards, when, being no longer in such 
need, the necessity for his submission to his parliament had 
in some degree passed away, he procured their consent to 
the repeal of this offensive enactment. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

EDWARD III. (CONTINUED). 

1341— He was so fully occupied with the affairs of his own king- 
1377- dom that he would very probably have dropped all his pre¬ 
tensions to the Trench crown, if circumstances had not 
arisen the very next year which offered him a fresh opening 
into that kingdom. In the summer of 1341, John, duke of 
Brittany, died, leaving his duchy to his niece, who was mar¬ 
ried to Charles of Blois, a nephew of king Philip. But the 
count de Montfort, the nearest male heir, though in John’s 
lifetime he had formally acknowledged Charles and his wife, 
whose name was Jane, as his future sovereigns, yet, as soon 
as John was dead, sought to set aside their claims, and to 
make himself master of the duchy. He seized at once upon 
some of the most important towns, and then, feeling sure 
that Philip would espouse the cause of his nephew, he 
repaired to England, where he had inherited the earldom of 
Richmond, and solicited the assistance of Edward, offering, 
if he succeeded in making himself master of Brittany, to do 



EDWARD III. 


141 


XVII.] 

him homage for it as king of Prance. In all consistency 
Edward was bound to discountenance his pretensions, for 
the claim which he himself had advanced to the crown of 
Prance was derived from his mother, and if one female could 
inherit a kingdom, it certainly followed that another might 
succeed to a duchy. The princess Jane’s case was in fact 
far stronger than his, for Brittany was a fief of the French 
crown, and it had never been alleged that females could not 
succeed to fiefs, while there were precedents of such succession 
having been allowed : but as ambition was stronger than a 
regard for justice in Edward’s mind, he overlooked these 
considerations, made an alliance with Ee Montfort, and when 
shortly afterwards the count was taken prisoner by Philip, 
he sent a powerful force to support his countess, who main¬ 
tained the war on his behalf with great vigour. In the 
summer of 1312 he landed himself in Brittany with a small 
force, and laid siege to Vannes and other towns : but Yannes 
made so stout a resistance that the French had time to 
collect a powerful army, with which they threatened his 
communications, and cut off his supplies so successfully that 
the next year he was glad to listen to the mediation of the 
pope’s legates, and to conclude a truce with Philip for three 
years, leaving the contending parties in Brittany in posses¬ 
sion of what each held at the time. 

This truce, however, was not suffered to last its full time. 
Philip had no real intention of allowing his nephew to be 
stripped of a great portion of his wife’s inheritance; nor 
could Edward renounce the prospect which his alliance with 
Ee Montfort held out to him, of succeeding in his designs on 
Prance. Soon, instead of prosecuting negotiations for peace, 
each began to make complaints of the other, frivolous except 
to those who were determined to find in any trifle grounds 
for a renewel of their quarrel. Edward had the address to 
make his parliament enter into his views. They granted 
him unusual supplies ; and, in the beginning of 1345, he 
commenced that war against Prance which has thrown such 
lustre over his name in the eyes of those who allow them¬ 
selves to be so dazzled with success and triumph as to be 
blinded to the evils of ambition, injustice, and rapacity, and 
to the greatness of the crime of beginning an unprovoked 
war. 

His plan of the campaign was to attack Prance on two sides; 
and, with that view, he sent his cousin, the earl of Eerby, 


A.B. 

1341 — 
1377. 


142 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1341— 

1377- 


into Gruienne, who invaded the districts bordering on that 
province, and gained a victory at Auberoclie, near Bourdeaux, 
which would have been accounted a most splendid achieve¬ 
ment, if its glory had not been eclipsed by the superior im¬ 
portance of that gained by Edward himself in the succeeding 
year. The count de Lisle was besieging Auberoche with 
near 12,000 men, and Derby had not above 300 men-at-arms 
and 600 archers with him. But, in spite of his inferiority 
in numbers, he determined to attempt to relieve the place. 
The smallness of his force favoured him in one respect, by 
enabling him to approach the French without his arrival in 
their neighbourhood being known; and, attacking them 
unexpectedly while they were at supper, he routed them 
completely ; several thousand were slain, and the prisoners 
amounted to three times the number of his whole force. 

Edward’s own expedition was delayed by a voyage which 
he made to Elanders in the hopes of prevailing on the 
Flemings to depose their earl, and to elect his youthful son, 
the prince of Wales, as their sovereign. The project wa3 
supported by Yon Artaveld; but he had given so much 
offence by his insolence and cruelty, that he was murdered 
in the autumn in a popular tumult; and Edward, deprived of 
his chief ally in that quarter, returned to England. But the 
year had been wasted in these fruitless negotiations, and it 
was not till the spring of 1346 that he sailed with his army 
from Southampton. His fleet rivalled in its numbers that 
which bore Agamemnon and Achilles to the destruction of 
Troy, but his army did not exceed 30,000 men, and one-half 
of them were light troops drawn from Wales and Ireland, 
and though valuable in a skirmish or a pursuit, neither by 
their equipment nor their discipline well fitted to bear a 
share in a pitched battle. He landed safely at La Hogue, 
and advanced into Normandy, ravaging that province in 
every direction; took Caen, which enriched his army with 
an immense booty, and, being baffled in his attempt on 
liouen, by finding the bridge across the Seine broken down, 
he followed the course of the river almost up to the gates of 
Paris, pillaging and burning all the villages which lay in his 
line of march. Meanwhile, Philip had collected a vast army, 
and was preparing to hem him in on all sides, but he per¬ 
ceived his danger in time; with great promptitude and de¬ 
spatch, he repaired one of the bridges which had been broken 
down, crossed the Seine, and retired towards Elanders; but 


/ 


EDWARD III. 


113 


XVII.] 

on arriving on the banks of the Somme, be found the bridges 
over that river also broken down or strongly guarded, with 
a strong force defending the opposite bank, while Philip was 
pursuing him with above 100,000 men. However, a peasant 
of the district, who had been taken prisoner, was tempted by 
a large reward to show him a ford below Abbeville, which 
was passable at low water. He forced his passage in spite 
of all opposition, but so narrow was his escape, that his rear¬ 
guard had hardly crossed before the French king reached the 
ground that he had just quitted. By this time, however, 
the tide had risen so much as to prevent his being immedi¬ 
ately pursued across the river, and, seeing that a battle was 
inevitable, he availed himself of the respite thus afforded 
him to choose his ground, and to endeavour to make 
amends for the inequality of his numbers by the skill of his 
dispositions. 

On the 25th of August the vanguard of the French came 
in sight of the English army, drawn up in three lines on the 
rising ground behind the small village of Crecy. The first 
line was commanded by the prince of AVales, who was not 
yet seventeen years old, and who had with him as advisers 
and assistants, sir John Chandos and other knights, the 
flower of the English chivalry. The third line w\as held in 
reserve, and commanded by the king himself. They w r ere 
not one-fourth of the amount of the French army, but they 
were fresh, in good order, and full of confidence in the 
abilities of their king and general; while the French pre¬ 
sumed so much on their apparently overpowering numbers, 
that they neglected all military discipline. Philip, seeing 
that his men were fatigued with their long march round by 
Abbeville, by the advice of his chief officers issued orders to 
halt, intending to defer the attack till the next day; but no 
one attended to them, the rear refused to stop till they were 
as forward as the front line, the foremost ranks pressed on 
to preserve their relative positions. Thus they marched on 
in disorder till they came in sight of the English, and then 
the front ranks fell back on those in the rear in greater 
disorder still. “No one,” says Froissart, “who w r as not 
present can imagine the confusion, or the bad management 
and disorder of the French. Kings, dukes, earls, and barons, 
advanced in no regular order, but one after the other, or any 
way most pleasing to themselves.” The Genoese cross-bow¬ 
men began the battle; but were received w r ith such a storm 


A.D. 

1341 — 
1377. 


1346. 


A.D. 

1341- 

1377. 


144 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

of arrows by the English archers, that they threw away their 
weapons and fled in confusion. Philip, in his indignation, 
cried out to kill them as merely stopping up the way of the 
rest of the army; and many of the men-at-arms actually 
turned from the attack of the enemy to slaughter their own 
discomfited comrades. Meantime the archers poured their 
arrows upon the advancing cavalry, not only killing the 
horses, but piercing through the armour of the knights 
themselves; and the Welsh troops, rushing in among the 
disordered ranks, pitilessly slaughtered all who fell with 
their long knives. It was thus that the king of Bohemia 
fell; he was blind, but desired two of his knights to lead him 
into the thickest of the fight, that he might strike one blow 
for his ally. They fastened the reins of his horse to theirs, 
and were all found lying dead in one heap after the battle. 
The counts of Alenin and Elanders kept their men in 
better order, and pressed the prince of Wales so hard, that 
some of the nobles about him sent a message to the king to 
beg him to come to their aid. The king asked whether his 
son was dead, unhorsed, or badly wounded; and when he 
was told that he was still unhurt, he bade the messenger 
return and say that no reinforcement was to be expected 
from him, that his son was to win his own spurs, and that 
his wish was that the glory and honour of the day should be 
all his own. At last both the counts were slain; John of 
Hainault, Edward’s brother-in-law, seized the bridle of 
Philip’s horse, and forced him unwillingly from the field. 
They continued their flight all night; and at daybreak the 
king reached Amiens, accompanied by only five barons of all 
the numerous host that a few hours before had marched so 
confidently to reap what they expected to prove a certain 
and an easy victory. 

The loss of the French was not confined to that single 
day. Several detachments arrived on the morrow, ignorant 
of what had happened, and thinking to be in time to join 
the main body before the battle. They were attacked in 
detail and easily defeated; and a division sent forward by 
Edward to pursue the straggling remains of the defeated 
army overtook and slaughtered so many, that the carnage of 
the second day was far greater than that of the first; and 
the total loss of the French exceeded the numbers of the 
whole English army, while of the English there fell only three 
knights, one esquire, and a very few soldiers of inferior rank. 


EDWARD III. 


145 


XVII.] 

Daring the whole of the day of battle Edward had never 
put on his helmet; and, when the victory was complete, he 
came forward, and, embracing his son, attributed the victory 
wholly to his valour and conduct, and bade him assume the 
crest of the king of Bohemia, a plume of feathers, which, 
with its motto, Ich dien, “ I serve,” has ever since been 
borne by the princes of Wales, in memory ol this great day, 
and of the exploits of their greatest predecessor. 

Edward had learned prudence from Philip’s tactics, and 
could now afford to be cautious; instead, therefore, of 
attempting at present to penetrate further into Erance, he 
laid siege to Calais, in order to possess a sure means of 
retreat in case of necessity, and of entrance into the country 
at any future time. And, while occupied with this blockade, 
he received the news of a victory gained in his own country, 
of almost equal importance with that of Crecy. David 
Bruce, the king of Scotland, had returned from Erance in 
1342 ; and the kindness with which he had been treated 
there, had cemented the alliance between him and Philip. 
Wishing to assist his ally by making a diversion in his 
favour, and thinking also Edward’s absence a favourable 
opportunity for an inroad, in the autumn of 1346 he invaded 
Northumberland with 50,000 men, and extended his ravages 
and devastations as far as the city of Durham. In this 

V 

emergency queen Philippa, who had been left guardian of the 
kingdom, showed herself worthy of her heroic husband. She 
was unable to collect more than 12,000 men, whom she 
entrusted to the command of several nobles, including both 
the archbishops and the bishops of Durham and Lincoln 
(for the military order of the clergy was not yet extinct). 
The two armies met under the walls of Durham, in a plain 
near Neville’s Cross, from which the battle has taken its 
name. Before the conflict began the queen herself rode 
through the ranks, exhorting the soldiers to do their duty, 
and to fight for the honour of their lord and king. And 
manfully they replied to her exhortation, the Scots were 
routed with great slaughter, king David himself was taken 
prisoner and conveyed to London, where he was confined in 
the Tower. And Philippa, now thinking the kingdom safe 
on all sides, left the government in the hands of a council, 
crossed the Channel to join her husband, and was trium¬ 
phantly received by him in the camp before Calais. 

The" siege of that town was long protracted: Edward 


A.D. 

1341 — 
1377. 


146 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. forbore to storm it, being content with the slow but sure 
1341 effects of a blockade, and John de Vienne, the governor, 
defended it with consummate skill and fortitude. When he 
perceived that the king’s intention was to reduce the town 
by starvation, he drove out all the citizens who had not laid 
up for themselves a sufficient supply of provisions: 1700 
women, and children, and men unfit for war arrived starving 
in the English lines, and Edward, with a rare humanity, 
fed them and dismissed them, giving to each a present of 
money; but when the scarcity became more severe, and the 
governor a second time weeded the fated town of its useless 
mouths, he refused to repeat his generous act, and a wretched 
multitude perished of famine between the English camp and 
their native walls. At last the distress of the garrison 
became too intolerable for human fortitude to bear ; on one 
occasion a few ships with supplies succeeded in entering the 
harbour ; but a larger fleet, attempting to relieve the place, 
was captured by the English. The besiegers intercepted a 
letter from the governor to Philip, telling him that the gar¬ 
rison had eaten their horses, their dogs, and every animal in 
the place; but, whether such positive intelligence ever 
reached him or not, he knew well the fearful straits to 
which they must be reduced, and resolved to make a vigor¬ 
ous effort for their relief. He collected another army, not 
less than that which had fought at Crecy the preceding 
year, and approached the coast in the hope of forcing 
Edw r ard to a battle ; but the earl of Derby, who had joined 
his master wEen Crecy had relieved Guienne from all dan¬ 
ger, guarded all the passes so skilfully that there was no 
possibility of attacking the besieging army w r ith advantage, 
and Edward refused to be tempted by a challenge of Philip’s 
to come out and fight him in the open plain, or to relax for 
a moment his pressure on a prey now almost within his 
grasp. The French army retired, and Calais was left to its 
fate. Edw r ard was so enraged at their stubborn resistance, 
which had now lasted twelve months, that for a time he 
refused to grant the garrison any terms, and required them 
to surrender at discretion; but his own knights remon¬ 
strated against such unusual severity, and at last he con¬ 
sented to spare the rest on condition that six of the prin¬ 
cipal citizens should bring him the keys with ropes round 
their necks. The glory of the conqueror pales before that 
of the heroic men who now devoted themselves for the 


EDWARD III. 


147 


XVII.] 

safety of their fellow-citizens. It was not doubted that the 
six thus required to be given up would be instantly put to 
death, and all stood in silent dismay, not knowing who were 
to be the victims, or how they were to be chosen. In this 
moment of perplexing agony, the wealthiest citizen of the 
whole town, Eustace de St. Pierre, offered himself as the 
first of the six; a second, John Daire, made a similar offer: 
their example raised a noble enthusiasm in others, and the 
required number was speedily made up. Bareheaded and 
barefooted, with halters round their necks, did these gallant 
men present themselves before Edward, who ordered them 
to instant execution. At this cruel command the courtiers 
stood aghast; many remonstrated with the king, but in 
vain. Sir Walter Manny, who had originally come to Eng¬ 
land in the train of Philippa, on her marriage, and who had 
long been one of his most renowned and most honoured 
knights, entreated him not to tarnish the fame he had won 
by such merciless severity towards the innocent; but his 
prayers too were disregarded, and the prisoners were being 
led away to death, when the queen, hearing of what was 
taking place, hastened to her husband’s tent, her situation 
(she was near her confinement) increasing the influence she 
always so deservedly possessed over his mind, and besought 
him to grant her the men’s lives as a favour to herself. 
Edward was too true a knight to be deaf to the prayers of 
his lady-love, the prisoners were spared to bless the name of 
their noble-minded protectress 5 , and de St. Pierre was 
afterwards greatly trusted by Edward, who, except in mo¬ 
ments of unusual exasperation, knew how to honour virtue 
even in an enemy. 

Anxious to secure his conquest, the king expelled the 


5 I have related this story on the authority of Froissart; but it is doubted bv 
many recent historians, partly because de St. Pierre's subsequent position as an 
officer, trusted by Edward to keep order in Calais, seems to them inconsistent 
with the devotion to his country exhibited in this instance; and partly because 
no other ancient chronicler, except Froissart, mentions it. But, in the first 
place, de St. Pierre's self-devotion was rather to his fellow-citizens than to his 
country, and does not seem incompatible with faithful submission to the con¬ 
queror. In the feudal times, loyalty to the sovereign sat lightly upon most 
men; and the frequent conquests and transference of provinces inclined the 
population easily to submit to a new master. And the high qualities de 
St. Pierre had exhibited, might well lead Edward to trust him, if he was 
willing to be trusted. And, secondly, no one was better informed than Frois¬ 
sart of all the events of Edward’s wars; and we shall have to give up many 
undoubted facts in history, if we are to discredit those which are only recorded 
by one historian. 

L 2 


A.D. 

1341 — 
1377 - 


148 HISTORY OF EXGLAND. [dr. 

a.d. greater part of tlie inhabitants of Calais, and peopled it 
1341 with his own countrymen, appointing it to be the general 
mart for the chief objects of exportation from England, such 
as wool, tin, and lead, and thus making it a place of great- 
commercial importance. Above a year afterwards it became 
the scene of a romantic event, too characteristic of the 
manners and feelings of the age of chivalry, and also of the 
disposition of the king himself, to be passed over. Edward 
had entrusted the government of Calais to Aymery de 
Pavie, a Lombard knight, who, for a bribe of 20,000 crowns, 
agreed to betray it to the French ; but Edward had intel¬ 
ligence of his treachery, and compelled him to continue the 
negotiation, and to give him notice of the day on which the 
proposed surrender was to take place. It was fixed for 
New Year’s Lay, 1349, and, the day before, the king, with 
900 picked men, arrived in Calais: he himself wore plain 
armour, and the party was under the nominal command of 
sir Walter Manny. At midnight a detachment of French 
were admitted, as it had been agreed; but no sooner had 
they passed the gates than they were attacked, and slain or 
taken prisoners by the English, who then, with the garrison, 
sallied out to attack the larger body which was stationed at 
a short distance from the walls, awaiting the success of their 
treacherous attempt (for there was a truce between France 
and England at the time). A fierce conflict ensued, and 
Edward himself engaged sir Eustace de BAbeaumont, one of 
the most distinguished knights of France, and the chief of 
those who had been sent by Philip to challenge him to a 
battle in front of Calais. Edward, who, as has been said, 
was disguised as a private knight, was in great danger: 
twice De Eibeaumont struck him down upon his knees ; but 
at last his courage and skill prevailed, and the Frenchman 
was forced to surrender. Many of the French knights 
were taken prisoners ; and when Edward returned to Calais, 
and had them brought before him, they learned for the first 
time that the king of England in person had been their 
conqueror. He treated them with chivalrous courtesy, and 
at a banquet to which he invited them, he took from his 
own head a chaplet of pearls, and placed it on the brows of 
sir Eustace, giving him his liberty without ransom, and 
bidding him show the chaplet wherever he went, and say 
that it had been given him by the king of England as the 
bravest knight whom he had ever encountered. 


EDWARD IIT. 


149 


XVII.] 

The finances of neither kingdom were able to sustain the a.d. 
expense of a protracted war, and the fall of Calais was fol- Al¬ 
lowed by a truce which lasted six years. Such an interval 
of peace was of rare occurrence in that warlike time, yet 
the only interruption to complete tranquillity was an en¬ 
gagement between the English and Spanish fleets off the 
Sussex coast. There had been no declaration of war be¬ 
tween the nations; but Edward, who was very jealous of 
his naval supremacy, took offence at the ostentation with 
which the Spaniards swept the Channel on their way to 
Elanders with their merchandise, and equipped a fleet 
nearly equal in numbers, but inferior in the size of the 
vessels, to intercept them on their return. He himself and 
the prince of Wales took the command, and so obstinate 
was the battle, and so greatly were the English ships 
damaged, that both king and prince were in great personal 
danger. The ship in which the prince was actually did 
sink, and he had barely time to save himself and his crew 
by boarding a Spanish vessel which he had taken. At last 
victory declared for the English : fourteen of the enemy’s 
ships were taken ; the rest fled, and Edward, not without 
severe loss, returned in triumph to the queen, who had 
beheld the conflict from a neighbouring castle. 

It was not through war, however, that the heaviest losses fell 
upon the English nation. A pestilence, more terrible in its 
nature and more universal than any previously recorded, had 
traversed the greater part of the civilized world; and, in 
1349, it reached this island, and committed fearful ravages. 

Its evils were not confined to the loss of life that it 
caused; but, like the plague in the reign of Charles II., it 
demoralized the whole people by engendering despair, law- . 
lessness, and a forgetfulness of even the strongest ties of 
natural affection. All care for the future was laid aside, as 
no man felt sure of his life; and it was only by the most 
stringent ordinances that the people could be compelled to 
attend to the cultivation of the land, or the labourers to 
work for wages, which, it seemed probable, their masters 
might not live to pay, nor they themselves to receive. 

When the truce had lasted about two years king Philip 
died, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John, a brave and 
honourable prince, but destitute of the prudence and caution 
of his father. The first years of his reign were disquieted 
by internal faction, caused partly by his own hasty temper, and 


150 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. still more by the mischievous conduct of the king of Navarre, 
1341— who, though possessed of a kingly title, was lord only of a 
13 77- petty principality on the borders of Spain, and of a few for¬ 
tresses in Normandy, and who sought to give himself that 
importance by his intrigues which his insignificant territories 
could not procure him. At last he was seized by John, and 
thrown into prison, and his brother immediately appealed to 
the protection of Edward, who, now that his kingdom had 
recovered from the exhaustion caused by the previous war 
and by the pestilence, was willing enough to renew his 
interference in the affairs of Erance. In support of his new 
ally he again invaded that country on both sides, sending 
the prince of Wales to Guienne, and entering it himself from 
Calais. After ravaging Picardy he left the earl of Derby, 
whom he had created duke of Lancaster, in command in that 
province, and hastened towards Scotland to repel an incur¬ 
sion which the Scotch had made into the northern counties. 
The prince’s operations were more important. His army 
did not consist of above 12,000 men ; but with that small 
force he penetrated as far as the Loire, when, finding that 
John, imitating the tactics of his father, had caused the 
bridges to be broken down, and was preparing to hem him 
in with a superior force, he retreated back towards Guienne; 
but, stopping to take the castle of ltomorantin, he lost some 
days, and gave time for the French to overtake him. Near 
Poitiers the French king, with 60,000 men, came up with 
the small force under command of the prince. He was pre¬ 
paring for an immediate assault, when the cardinal du 
Perigord prevailed upon him to allow him to endeavour, by 
negotiation, to avert the bloodshed which was about to 
ensue. The prince was so sensible of the difficulties of his 
position that he expressed his willingness to submit to any 
terms consistent with the honour of himself, and of his 
country. He offered to surrender all his conquests, and not 
to serve against France for seven years. But John insisted 
that he should surrender himself and 100 of his knights 
prisoners ; and, as this was refused, both sides prepared for 
battle on the following day. 

Sept. Precious time had been wasted in this parley by the 
l!)th, French, of which the prince took skilful advantage, strength- 
lo5G * ening his position by intrenchments, placing ambuscades, 
and lining the hedges between which the French must 
advance to the attack with picked archers. Early in the 


EDWARD III. 


151 


XVII.] 

morning of the 19th of September the battle began. The 
Trench vanguard, passing between the two lines of archers, 
whom they never saw till their arrows fell among their ranks, 
were instantly thrown into confusion: unfortunately for the 
Trench king, his sons, though only boys, were present, under 
the care of some chosen knights, who, seeing the disorder, 
hurried them off the field, lest they should fall into the 
enemy’s hands. Their flight, of which the reason was not 
understood, was imitated by the whole division ; and the 
second division followed the example of the first. No part 
of the Trench army behaved well except the force which was 
under the command of John himself. This portion, and it 
was more numerous than the whole force of the English, for 
a while made a gallant stand : but they were dispirited by 
the rout of their comrades, and at last they also gave way, 
and the king himself was taken prisoner, fighting gallantly 
to the last. One of his sons also, prince Philip, was taken 
at the same time. 

The skill and valour with which the prince of Wales had 
won the battle against such vast odds was truly admirable: 
but more really glorious by far was the moderation and 
humility which he displayed after his victory. The English 
kings of that era, though often slaves to ambition, seem 
rarely to have been intoxicated by success. But the young 
Edward on this occasion surpassed all previous or subsequent 
conquerors in his considerate modesty. The Trench king 
was brought captive to his tent. He received him bare¬ 
headed with the deepest submission, as if their respective 
characters of vassal and liege lord were in no degree changed 
by the accidents of war; and, at the banquet which he pre¬ 
pared for him in the evening, he waited on him as his 
chamberlain, declining to sit down in his presence, compli¬ 
menting him on the personal valour which he had exhibited, 
and which, in truth, had been very conspicuous, and ascribing 
his own success, not to his own superiority, but to the favour 
of God. He continued the same behaviour to him on his 
arrival in London. They landed at Southwark. The king 
was mounted on a superb charger, richly caparisoned ; while 
the prince rode by his side on a smaller horse, and presented 
his prisoner to his father, who received him with the same 
courtesy and respect as if he had arrived to pay him a volun¬ 
tary visit of friendship. Edward had now the unexampled 
triumph of seeing two hostile monarchs prisoners in London 


A.D. 
1341 — 

1377. 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


152 



A.D. 

13^1 — 
1377 - 


at the same time. But he released David of Scotland soon 
after on the payment of ransom. 

The captivity of John caused sad disorders in France. 
His son, the dauphin (he was the first prince of France 
who bore that title), though already giving promise of the 
talents which were so conspicuous in later years, was as yet 
too young to govern the kingdom with authority. The 
populace of Paris, always turbulent, broke out into great 
excesses ; the army became mutinous ; and in many districts 
the peasants rose in insurrection against the nobles, burnt 
their castles, and subjected them and their families to the 
most atrocious insults. John, eager to recover his liberty, 
agreed to restore all the provinces that had been possessed 
by any of the English kings without any obligation of fealty; 
but, as his states refused to ratify such a treaty, Edward 
once more invaded France, in the autumn of 1359, with a 
far larger army than he had ever commanded before, landed 
at Calais, ravaged all the surrounding country, and then 
proceeded to besiege Bheims, from a wish to be crowned 
king of France in that city. It made so valiant a resistance 
that the approach of winter compelled him to raise the siege ; 
and, before he could resume active operations the next year, 
the negotiations for peace, which had not been interrupted, 
were concluded. The advice and influence of the duke of 
Lancaster prevailed on him to be content with more moderate 
terms than he had originally demanded, and he formally 
renounced all claim to the crown of France. But he re¬ 
ceived extensive provinces in the south-west of that country, 
retained Calais and other strong fortresses in the north, and 
obliged John to pay him 3,000,000 crowns of gold for his 
ransom. King John returned to France in July, 1300; but, 
after some time, finding himself unable to execute all the 
stipulations of the treaty, from the reluctance of the in¬ 
habitants of some of the ceded provinces to submit to 
English domination, he came again to England, and sur¬ 
rendered himself a prisoner, telling his councillors, who 
endeavoured to dissuade him from such a design, that, 
though good faith were banished from the rest of the earth, 
she ought still to retain her habitation in the breasts of 
princes. The palace of the Savoy was assigned to him for 
his residence, where he remained till his death, in 1364. 

Edward was for some years sufficiently occupied in 
measures for advancing the commercial and manufacturing 


EDWARD 111. 


153 


XVII.] 

prosperity of his own kingdom, which had been somewhat a.d. 
interrupted by his long wars, and with struggles against the 13 41— 
ecclesiastical power and the court of Pome, whose encroach- 137 
ments he curbed with a strong hand. Before the battle of 
Poitiers he had procured the passing of the law called the 
statute of provisors, which established the freedom of 
election to benefices, and deprived the pope of all power of 
controlling or interfering with it; and, in 1367, he for ever 
abolished the payment of tribute with which John had 
burdened the kingdom, and further diminished the papal in¬ 
fluence by making it illegal, in the highest degree, to carry 
any cause by appeal to the papal courts. Meanwhile the 
prince of Wales, to whom he had resigned the absolute 
sovereignty of Guienne, was still engaged in war; Peter the 
Cruel, king of Spain, was one of the greatest monsters that 
ever disgraced humanity, and he had especially provoked 
the indignation of the French, by first imprisoning and then 
poisoning his queen, Blanche of Bourbon, a French princess. 

The general detestation in which he was held encouraged 
Henry of Trastamara, his natural brother, to attempt to de¬ 
throne him, and the French sent to his assistance the 
celebrated Bertrand du Guesclin, whose fame collected 
around his standard many of the military adventurers who 
had joined Edward’s army in his last expedition into France, 
and who, since his return to England, had been the terror 
of the country over which they roved, exacting vast contri¬ 
butions and perpetrating horrid cruelties. 

The prince of Wales, a stranger probably to the enormities 
of which Peter was accused, influenced by the claims of 
legitimacy, and partly perhaps by an inclination to espouse 
a cause which was attacked by the French, marched into 
Castile at the head of an army to reinstate his ally, who had 
been expelled from Spain; and though Henry and Hu 
Guesclin had forces more than thrice as numerous as his 
own, he defeated them at Najara, in April, 1367; Hu 
Guesclin himself was taken prisoner, and Henry was forced 
to flee for safety to France. 

This was the last advantage gained by the English arms 
in this reign. The prince’s government became unpopular 
in Guienne, from the taxes which he was forced to impose 
to meet the debts incurred in his Spanish campaign ; and 
the inhabitants of the province appealed to Charles, the new 
king of France, whom they still considered as their liege 


154 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. lord, in spite of the treaty made by his father with king 
1341 — Edward. And Charles, knowing that the prince’s health 
was failiug, and that the king’s energies were becoming 
impaired by age, was nowise averse to availing himself of 
any pretext to retrieve the disasters which had been incurred 
by his father. He poured troops into several of the provinces 
which John had ceded ; the prince was unable from illness to 
keep the field, and though he endeavoured to stop the inclina¬ 
tion on the part of the provinces to return to their allegiance 
to the French crown, by perpetrating an act of savage cruelty 
at Limoges, sadly at variance with his usually humane and 
generous character, slaughtering the whole of the citizens, 
men, women, and children, to the number of 3000; yet 
such an atrocity had, as it deserved, an opposite effect, and 
the French rapidly recovered the greater part of the ter¬ 
ritories which they had lost. Edward himself prepared 
for another invasion of France, but was detained so long in 
England by foul winds, that he was forced to abandon the 
design. And an army which he did send under his third 
son, John of Gaunt, or Ghent, to whom, on the death of the 
duke of Lancaster, he had given that duchy, though it 
traversed the whole country from Calais to Bourdeaux, re¬ 
turned to England without having gained any advantages 
of importance ; at last Edward was forced to make peace 
with Charles, in which he submitted to be deprived of all his 
ancestral possessions in France except the cities of Bour¬ 
deaux and Bayonne, and of all his conquests except Calais. 

The increasing infirmities of age in some degree weakened 
the vigour of his intellect, and the duke of Lancaster, to 
whom he entrusted the principal share of the government, 
was very unpopular. Queen Philippa had been dead some 
years, and a lady of the name of Alice Pierce, w r ho had been 
one of her attendants, was supposed to have obtained an un¬ 
due influence over him; which she exerted, not only in 
political affairs, but also by impeding the proper course of 
justice, in favour of those who had purchased her protection. 
Her ascendancy caused a very general indignation, and when 
the king, who was still involved in debt, applied to his 
parliament for additional supplies, it availed itself of his 
necessities and of his weakness to attack his favourites, and 
even to procure his assent to very stringent enactments 
designed to curb the rapacity of his mistress. So salutary 
were the restraints which they sought to impose on the 


EDWARD III. 


155 


XVII.] 

royal prerogative tliat it long bore the name of 11 the good 
parliamentand its measures were warmly supported by 
the Black Prince, who entertained great jealousy of the 
duke of Lancaster, who was very commonly suspected of 
designing to supplant his youthful son in his inheritance. 
The prince, who had long been sinking, died in June, 1376, 
leaving behind him a character for military skill and chival¬ 
rous generosity, though somewhat tarnished by the massacre 
at Limoges, inferior to no hero of the age of chivalry; and 
in the June of the next year, the king himself, having de¬ 
clared Richard, the son of the Black Prince, his heir, died, 
in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the fifty-first of his 
reign. 

Froissart tells us that it was the common opinion of the 
English that between two valiant kings of England there is 
always one weak in mind and body; but Edward III. did 
not need such a foil as his father to set off his splendid 
abilities and achievements. As a skilful warrior his vic¬ 
tories prove him to have been worthy to be ranked in the 
very first class; and so dazzling is military success, that in 
the opinion of the multitude they have probably caused 
him to be generally ranked above his illustrious grandfather. 
But an impartial judge must observe that while the ambi¬ 
tion of the first Edward was limited to objects within his 
power, and eminently useful to his people, that of the third 
aimed at what was neither practicable nor desirable. It 
was not possible for England to subdue France; and, could 
she have done so by any accident, it would have been the 
most unfortunate event that could have befallen her, as the 
result must have been that she would have become a pro¬ 
vince of that more powerful and extensive kingdom ; while 
the desire for military glory, and the feeling of hostility to 
France, which his long wars engendered, were productive 
of the greatest misfortunes to both nations. 

The most truly honourable part of Edward’s military 
character is his generosity to the vanquished, which would 
have been praiseworthy in any age, but which was espe¬ 
cially admirable in one so seldom influenced by moderation 
or humanity. As a ruler, he, like his ancestors, was in¬ 
clined to arbitrary measures; but his wars placed him so 
much at the mercy of his parliament, which in his reign 
began to have a more correct estimate than before of its 
legitimate importance, that he was often obliged to submit, 


A.D. 

1341 — 

1377 - 


A.D. 

] 341 - 

1377 . 


1377 — 

1399 . 


156 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

though lie constantly asserted bis right to levy taxes by his 
own authority, and sometimes exerted it; always, however, 
in such cases pleading that it was the necessity of defend¬ 
ing the kingdom that compelled him to disregard the re¬ 
monstrances of his people. Unmixed praise may be awarded 
to the resolution with which he bridled the papal authority 
within his realm, and to the statesmanlike foresight with 
which he endeavoured to promote its manufactures and its 
commerce. In these respects he showed his purpose of 
imitating the wise patriotism of his grandfather; but he 
did not imitate his example in the repression of offences, or 
the punishment of offenders, often pardoning the grossest 
criminals at the solicitation of powerful nobles, and paying 
no attention to the earnest remonstrances of his parliament 
when they represented to him truly that the greatest of evils 
in a civilized country is the defective administration of law 
and justice. On the whole, we may pronounce him to have 
been an able, brave, and magnanimous, rather than a wise 
and patriotic king; and we may look on his reign rather 
as brilliant and splendid for himself, than as fortunate or 
beneficial to his people. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

RICHARD II. 

The Black Prince had married his cousin Joan, the only 
child of his great uncle, the earl of Kent, who was beheaded 
by Mortimer at the beginning of his father’s reign. She 
was a widow, having been previously married to sir Thomas 
Holland; and by that marriage she had some sons, half- 
brothers to the young king. 

Richard, often called Richard of Bourdeaux, from having 
been born in that city, was only eleven years old when he 
succeeded to the throne; and his grandfather, singularly 
enough, had omitted to provide any regency or body of 
councillors to regulate the government during his minority. 
His second son, Lionel, duke of Clarence, was dead, having 
left a daughter, married to the earl of March; but he left 
three other sons, the dukes of Lancaster, of York, and of 



RICHARD II. 


157 


XVIII.] 

Gloucester (though the two last received these titles 
from their nephew at a subsequent period); and these 
princes, as the young king’s uncles, might have appeared 
to be pointed out by their relationship as his natural 
guardians, but they were men of no great ability; and the 
views of Lancaster and Gloucester, who were both ambi¬ 
tious, were more likely to lead them to seek to thwart each 
other, than to act in harmony together. 

In preventing the anarchy, which there seemed some 
reason to apprehend, the commons took the lead. They 
appointed, for the first time, a speaker to preside over their 
deliberations, choosing Peter de la Mare, a high-spirited 
man, who had incurred the displeasure of Edward by the 
freedom with which he led the attacks on his ministers and 
Alice Pierce at the end of his reign ; and then they applied 
to the lords to nominate a council of regency, wffiich they 
did, appointing three bishops, two earls, and four knights, 
but limiting their commission to a year. 

There was still war with Prance; but as Charles Y. died 
the year after Edward, leaving his kingdom also to a child, 
it was carried on in a languid manner, unproductive of any 
important results to either country. Still the necessity 
which it caused of keeping an armed force on foot created 
a deficiency in the revenue, and the council had recourse 
to a poll-tax, as it was called, imposing a tax of three groats 
on every person of either sex above fifteen years of age. 
The common people, who had been gradually becoming more 
discontented at the state of dependence in which they were 
held by the nobles, and which was at this time more abject 
in England than in any other country in Europe, had been 
for some time led to cherish thoughts of turbulence and 
resistance to their oppressors by the example of the in¬ 
surrection of the peasants in France. They were now still 
further exasperated by the insolence of the officers ap¬ 
pointed to collect the poll-tax. One of them insulted a 
tiler’s daughter so grossly, that her father knocked out 
his brains with his hammer, and then, under the name of 
Wat Tyler, with other associates, excited such an insurrec¬ 
tion throughout the south-eastern counties, that in a short 
time 100,000 men w r ere collected under their guidance on 
Blackheath. They seized the princess of Wales, on her 
journey to Canterbury, and compelled her to kiss their 
leaders, entered London, burnt the duke ol Lancaster s 


A.D. 

1377 — 

1399 . 


158 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. palace, pillaged the merchants’ warehouses, and at last 
.1377— broke into the Tower, and murdered the archbishop, and 
other nobles. Richard was passing along Smithfield with 
a small retinue, when he met a large band of the insurgents, 
with Tyler at their head, who behaved with such insolence, 
playing with his dagger, and seeming to menace the king 
with personal violence, that Walworth, the mayor of London, 
drew his sword, and killed him on the spot. His followers, 
enraged rather than dismayed at his fall, appeared pre¬ 
paring to revenge it, when Richard, with admirable presence 
of mind, rode forward among them by himself, bidding them 
not to be angry at having lost their leader, for that he 
himself would be their leader. Submitting to the voice of 
authority, thus miugled with condescension, they followed 
him out of the city, where he granted most of their de¬ 
mands, though his concessions were subsequently revoked 
by parliament when the nobles had had time to collect an 
army sufficient to protect the king from any recurrence of 
the danger. 

Richard’s subsequent conduct did not, however, fulfil the 
promise held out by this instance of calmness and courage 
in his boyhood. In the eighth year of his reign the Scots, 
having procured the assistance of a body of Trench cavalry, 
invaded England, and committed great ravages; and he 
marched into Scotland, at the head of 60,000 men, pene¬ 
trating into the very heart of the country, burning Edin¬ 
burgh and Perth, while they, disregarding the devastation 
which he was committing, inflicted almost equal injury in 
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire. His coun¬ 
cillors urged him to descend towards the western border 
to intercept them; but he was impatient to return to 
England to his usual pleasures, and led back his army, 
contented with having retaliated the injuries done to his 
subjects by the Scots, without exacting any reparation for 
them, or taking any steps to prevent their repetition. 

Like most weak monarchs he now attached himself to a 
favourite, the earl of Oxford, the head of the great family of 
the De Veres, a man of agreeable manners, but of no 
abilities; he created him marquis of Dublin and duke of 
Ireland, and, by thus raising him above the rest of the 
nobility, he excited in them a jealousy of which he soon 
reaped the bitter fruits. The duke of Gloucester had for a 
while been kept in check by his elder brother, the duke of 


RICHARD II. 


159 


XVIII.] 

Lancaster; but this latter, who had married a Spanish prin¬ 
cess, and who fancied that he derived from that marriage 
some right to the throne of Castile, had gone thither to 
prosecute his claims, at the head of a large military force; 
and Gloucester, being thus left to carry on his schemes 
without hindrance, began to show the dangerous character 
of his ambition. He brought the most frivolous charges 
against the earl of Suffolk, the chancellor, one of the late 
king’s most esteemed councillors; and when he had pro¬ 
cured his removal from his office, he compelled the parlia¬ 
ment to appoint a commission of his own creatures to govern 
the kingdom; a measure which, though Richard was now of 
full age, in effect deprived him of all power or authority; 
and as the chief judges unanimously pronounced this com¬ 
mission to be illegal, he and his adherents collected an 
armed force, with which they marched towards London, 
drove De Yere from the kingdom, banished some, and put 
to death others of the judges who had given this unfavourable 
sentence, and made themselves complete masters of the 
kingdom. It is impossible to say to what lengths the duke 
might not have proceeded, had not the duke of Lancaster 
returned from Spain shortly afterwards, where he had re¬ 
signed all his pretensions to the throne of Castile for a large 
sum of money, and Richard, supported by him, recovered his 
authority. He had not learnt to make a good use of it. 
With thoughtless levity, he broke the promises which he 
made to his parliament, and dissipated the supplies which 
they granted him for the national defence, in feasting and 
luxury. The people saw, with daily increasing discontent, 
not only the cessation of its career of victory, but the decay 
of its trade and commerce, which as yet required the foster¬ 
ing vigilance of the monarch to secure their prosperity ; 
and when the commons addressed to him a vigorous remon¬ 
strance against the evils which appeared to them the most 
grievous, he treated them with great disdain, and even 
caused the mover of the remonstrance, a member of the 
name of Haxey, to be impeached as a traitor, and con¬ 
demned ; though the sentence was not carried into execu¬ 
tion. He had been married but a few years, when the queen 
died; and as both England and France were now weary oi 
the war which had lasted so long, negotiations were set on 
foot, which, though they did not lead to a permanent peace, 
resulted in a truce for twenty-five years; which Richard 


A.D. 

1377 — 

1399 . 


160 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. endeavoured to render more durable by marrying the Trench 
1377— king’s daughter, though she was a child only seven years 
I399 ‘ old. 

Unhappily, the truce and the connexion with Trance 
were unpopular with the nation ; and the king’s own con¬ 
duct was not such as to command respect. He was not 
charged with any crimes; he was neither cruel nor licen¬ 
tious ; but his whole time was given up to thoughtless re¬ 
velry, and the chief affairs of the kingdom were, as before, 
entrusted to favourites ; a conduct which, though the favour¬ 
ites themselves were such as were entitled to his affection, 
being his half-brothers, the sons of his mother by her first 
marriage, still gave Gloucester a handle to cabal a second 
time against his government. He carried his practices so 
far, that Richard believed, not without reason, that the 
struggle between them could only be terminated by the de¬ 
struction of one; and when he had adopted this opinion, 
he took instant steps to save himself from being the victim. 
His other uncles coincided with him. With the full appro¬ 
bation of the dukes of Lancaster and York, he caused Glou¬ 
cester to be arrested, and removed to Calais, where he was 
put to death ; and some of his most powerful partisans were 
also executed or banished. The parliament cordially second¬ 
ed all his measures, and went such lengths in showing their 
confidence in him that they voted him several important 
taxes for life; a favour which had not been granted to any 
preceding sovereign. 

But the weakness of the king was such that it invited 
enemies from among his nearest relations. And there now 
arose against him one more formidable than the violent and 
hasty Gloucester. Henry, earl of Derby, the duke of 
Lancaster’s eldest son, had been lately created duke of 
Hereford, in reward for his support of the king in his late 
contest. The duke of Norfolk had been equally ardent in 
the same cause; but, when their enemy was removed, these 
two nobles quarrelled, and in accordance with the practice 
of the times, the one formally challenged the other to single 
combat. A day was appointed, and lists were enclosed at 
Coventry for the encounter. The king and most of the 
nobility of the kingdom were present. But, before a blow 
was struck, the king suddenly interposed, banished the duke 
of Norfolk for life, and Hereford for ten years; which last 
sentence was afterwards commuted into one of perpetual 


RICHARD IT. 


161 


XVIII.] 

exile; and when the duke of Lancaster died, as he did a.d. 
shortly afterwards, Richard seized his estates, in spite of all 13 77— 
the protestations which the banished duke made against 13y9 ' 
such an act of injustice. 

The new duke of Lancaster was a prince of considerable 
abilities, and of high reputation as a warrior; and, finding 
that he could not procure what he considered his inalien¬ 
able rights by peaceful means, he prepared to recover 
them by force. Richard, suspicious of no such danger, 
was absent in Ireland, whither he had gone to revenge the 
death of his cousin and heir, the earl of March, who had 
been slain in a skirmish with the natives, when the duke 
of Lancaster landed in Yorkshire, and soon collected an 
army of 60,000 men. Even the duke of York, his uncle, 
whom Richard had appointed guardian of the kingdom, 
took his part, and he had no difficulty in seizing some of 
the most important places in the island. Some of Richard’s 
ministers he seized, and put to death ; and so rapid was 
his progress towards supreme power, and so general was his 
popularity, that the army with which Richard returned 
from Ireland to oppose him, deserted in great numbers, 
till in a few days there were hardly 6000 men left round 
the royal standard. The unhappy king fled to the isle of 
Auglesea, intending to escape from thence to Ireland or 
.France; but he was persuaded by treachery to surrender 
to the earl of Northumberland, and was conducted to London. 

The duke of Lancaster compelled him to sign a deed, re¬ 
signing his crown; and, not contented with that, convened 
a parliament, before whom he laid a long list of charges 
against his sovereign. It was received with unanimous 
approbation; but one man in the whole assembly, the 
bishop of Carlisle, ventured to raise his voice in defence of 
his master, seeking also to press the adherents of the 
aspiring duke with the argument that if Richard were 
deposed, it was not he, but the young earl of March, who 
was the next heir to the crown. His honest boldness was 
of no avail, the two houses of parliament voted Richard’s 
deposition, and then the duke of Lancaster rose and claimed 
the crown as a descendant of Henry III. No one now 
ventured to reassert the notorious fact, which in the next 
generation gave rise to the civil wars that desolated the 
island, that, if the throne was vacant, there was a nearer 
heir than he. He was declared king, under the title of 

M 


A.D. 

1377- 

1399 . 


162 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Henry IV.; and thus the reign of Bichard ended on the 
30th *of September, 1399, when he had been king twenty- 
two years. 

The peers, prompted, no doubt, by Henry, resolved that 
Bichard should be kept in confinement; but there had 
already been one sad example in his family, that it is but 
a short road from the prison of princes to their grave; and 
so it proved in this instance. He was removed from one 
castle to another, and at the beginning of the next year he 
was conveyed to Pontefract. The manner of his death was 
not certainly known. Some reported that he had been 
murdered by sir Piers Exton, and others of his guards; 
but the more general, and probably the better founded 
belief was, that he was starved to death by Henry’s order. 
His body was conveyed to London, and the face was ex¬ 
posed to view, that there might be no doubt of his death, 
and Henry himself, with singular audacity, attended his 
funeral. 

His chief fault appears to have been a lightness of cha¬ 
racter, which made him prefer the suggestions of youthful 
councillors to the graver advice of more experienced minis¬ 
ters ; an addiction to trifling amusement, instead of that 
attention to weighty affairs .which was required of him by 
his situation; and a desire at times to act in independence 
of the law, which he saw disregarded by his most powerful 
subjects, and which he found quite impotent to protect 
himself. But his misfortunes arose far more from the 
turbulent ambition of his nearest relatives, some one or 
other of whom was plotting against him from the day of 
his accession to that of his death. 

The political circumstances of his reign are but of little 
importance, and many of them are enveloped in great ob¬ 
scurity and uncertainty; but in the domestic history of 
the nation events began to take place of more lasting in¬ 
terest. It was now that literature began to assert its 
claim to notice. There had been poets and romancers for 
several generations; and some of their works exist to the 
present day, being mostly translations from French authors. 
But the first great original poet of whom England can boast 
was Geoffrey Chaucer, who was born indeed in the first 
half of the last reign, and had been favourably noticed, and 
employed in foreign embassies by Edward, but whose works 
were probably mostly written after Iiickard came to the 


XVIII.] RICHARD II. , 163 

throne; and that unfortunate prince eminently deserves 
the character of having been a steady and discerning patron 
of literary men, suggesting subjects to him, and to Gower, 
another poet of inferior merit, and honouring with especial 
favour the spirit-stirring accounts by Froissart of the im¬ 
mortal deeds of his father and his grandfather. 

More important still was the influence exercised on the 
natural character by the first Church reformer, John "Wick- 
liffe. He, too, was born in the early part of the last reign; 
and his first controversy with the friars took place within 
a few years of the battle of Poitiers; but it was not till 
the commencement of E-ichard’s reign that he began to 
preach openly against the pope himself; and the new king 
had been some months on the throne when Wickliffe was 
summoned to defend himself before the bishop of London, 
and was so vigorously supported by the duke of Lancaster, 
that he escaped with a severe reprimand. The failure of 
this attack upon him encouraged him to greater bold¬ 
ness. His country cannot claim for him the honour of 
having been the first person in Europe to protest against 
the corruptions of the Church of Home. In the valleys of 
the Alps the Yaudois had for ages preserved their simple 
faith; and even in Italy itself, as we learn from Dante 6 , 
the number of heretics was very considerable. But he was 
the first Englishman who openly declared the thoughts 
which' many had already cherished in their hearts; and he 
was soon followed by a band of disciples, to whom the 
Bomanists gave the name of Lollards, from a Latin word 
signifying tares 7 , who were eager in their defence of his 
opinions, and their attachment to his person. In some of 
his principles he rather resembled the Puritan^ of Charles’s 

6 “ Ed eg-li a me; ‘ Qui son gli eresiarche 

Co’ lor seguaci d’ ogni setta, e molto 
Piu, che non credi, son le tombe carche. 

Simile qui con simile e sepolto : 

E i monimenti son piu e men caldi:’ ” 

Inferno ix. 43. 

“ He answer thus returned : 

‘ The arch-heretics are here, accompanied 
By every sect their followers; and much more, 

Than thou believest, the tombs are freighted : like 
With like is buried; and the monuments 
Are different in degrees of heat.’ ” 

Carey's Translation. 


M 2 


A.D. 

1377— 

1399. 


7 Lolium. 


164 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. time, than the more temperate leaders of the Reformation, 
1377— as it was established under Edward VI., protesting against 
the robes of the priesthood, against church music and 
organs, and against ecclesiastical endowments, and insisting 
that the clergy should maintain themselves with their own 
hands. 

Before his death he gave the Church of Rome a blow, 
from which it never recovered, and placed his own doctrines 
on a foundation which could not be shaken, by translating 
the Scriptures into the mother tongue of the people. Even 
before the conquest parts of the Bible, and especially the 
Gospels, had been translated into Anglo-Saxon; but the 
Normans had introduced so many French words into the 
language, that the pure Anglo-Saxon had become obsolete, 
and almost unintelligible; so that the nation in general 
was as little acquainted with the Bible as if it had been 
still confined to its original language, and to the Latin 
Vulgate; but this new translation, executed with great skill 
and learning, speedily diffused a knowledge of, and a still 
more universal desire for, the truth, and thus paved the 
way for that more general reformation, which a century 
and a half later finally emancipated half Europe from the 
shackles in which superstition and imposture had so long 
bound her, and established in our land the fulness of religious 
knowledge and religious liberty. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

t 

HENRY IV. 

1399— Henry IV. was thirty years of age when he thus seized 
14l3 ‘ upon the throne of his cousin. His short reign, unmarked 
by any great events of foreign politics, is fixed in the 
memories of most people rather by the dramatist than by 
the historian. To the latter it presents little more than a 
series of conspiracies and insurrections, excited, not un¬ 
naturally, by his usurpation, but all put down with singular 
good fortune and unvarying success. And the success was 
deserved, if not by the sincerity and equity, at all events 
by the resolution and consummate prudence of Henry himself. 



HENRY TV. 


165 


XIX.] 

His first step, as he found the nobles unfriendly to and a.d. 
distrustful of him, was to seek to conciliate the still more 1399— 
opulent and formidable body of the clergy. His father had 1 * 
been Wickliffe’s most powerful supporter, and it is probable 
that he himself was secretly inclined to his doctrines; but, 
to gain the good will of the Church, he now did not hesitate 
to proclaim his intention to support the established religion, 
and promoted and gave his assent to an act for the sup¬ 
pression of all heresies and the punishment of all heretical 
teachers, and, in conformity with its provisions, in the 
second year of his reign, a London priest, of the name of 
William Sawtre, was burnt for denying the popish doctrine 
of transubstantiation, being the first martyr to the cruelty 
of the Church of Rome in this island 8 . 

It was evident that the only foreign enemy whom he had 
to apprehend was the French king, whose daughter had been 
married to Richard, and who made no secret of his indigna¬ 
tion at the murder of his son-in-law. To appease him Henry 
proposed an alliance between one of his own sons and the 
widowed queen, which was rejected with disdain. After 
much negotiation Isabella was permitted to return to France, 
but, though delighted to recover his daughter, Charles’s 
hostility to the new dynasty was in no degree appeased, and, 
though no declaration of war between the two countries 
took place, the knowledge which the French nobles pos¬ 
sessed of their sovereign’s feelings, prompted them to insult 
and injure the English on every opportunity ; and the count 
of St. Pol, who had married Richard’s sister, sent Henry 
an open defiance, and he and his allies, collecting a squadron 
of ships, made descents on the Isle of Wight, burnt 
Plymouth, took a number of English vessels in the Channel, 
and carried them as prizes into the French ports. 

These insults caused great discontent among the people, 
who remembered the especial pride which Edward had taken 
in his navy, and the triumphant manner in which he had 
asserted his right to the sovereignty of the seas. To quiet 
their murmurs, Henry undertook an expedition into Scot¬ 
land, which, as it produced no results, failed to add to his 

8 In the reign of Henry III., a clergyman had been burnt for renouncing his 
religion and becoming a Jew, in order to marry a Jewish woman; but his case, 
though equally indefensible in principle, differs from that of those whose only 
crime was not a renunciation of Christianity, but a difference from the Church 
of Rome on some of its peculiar and newly-invented doctrines. 


A.D. 

1399— 

1413. 


1403. 


166 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

reputation or popularity; but when, the next year, the 
Scots retaliated by an invasion of England, they were en¬ 
countered on the border by the earl of Northumberland, 
and his son Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur. In a battle 
which ensued on Homildon Hill, the English archers de¬ 
cided the victory before the men-at-arms could come to 
blows ; the Scots were utterly defeated, and their leader, 
Douglas, taken prisoner. 

On the Welsh frontier Henry had greater trouble. A 
Welsh gentleman, named Owen Glendower, descended from 
the ancient princes of the country, exasperated at having been 
deprived of his property by lord Gray de Euthyn, one of the 
king’s favourite nobles, and at being refused all redress, 
raised the standard of insurrection, defeated the barons who 
opposed him, took prisoners lord Gray and sir Edmund 
Mortimer, a baron nearly related to the royal family, as the 
uncle of the earl of March, the male heir of Edward III., 
and then, retiring among his native mountains, eluded every 
attempt on the part of the king and his generals to bring him 
to action, with such skill and uniform success, that his unvary¬ 
ing good fortune was commonly imputed to witchcraft. He 
even ventured at last to declare himself sovereign of Wales. 
The king of Erance received his ambassadors as those of an 
independent prince, and, making an alliance with him, sent 
a Erench force to assist him, which, however, soon became 
disgusted with the country and its rude inhabitants, and, 
after aiding in the capture of Caermarthen, returned home. 
At last the king sent his eldest son, the prince of Wales, 
Harry of Monmouth, as he was commonly called by his con¬ 
temporaries, from the place of his nativity, to conduct the 
war; and he, with a military skill beyond his years, though 
unable to bring Owen to a pitched battle, on the other hand 
gave him no opportunity of attacking himself or any detach¬ 
ments of his army, and, advancing steadily and cautiously, 
gradually narrowed the resources of the Welsh chieftain, till 
after four or five years of incessant warfare, he cooped 
him up among the mountainous wilds around Snowdon, 
where, though he still maintained the appearance of hostility, 
he was unable to give it any effect, but remained inactive, 
though unsubdued, for the rest of his life. 

In the fourth year of Henry’s reign a most formidable in¬ 
surrection broke out, which shook his throne to its founda¬ 
tions and nearly overturned it. He owed his crown chiefly 


HENRY IV. 


167 


XIX.] 

to the earl of Northumberland, who had not only supported a.d. 
him with all his power, which, in the north of Eugland, was 
almost equal to that of the sovereign, but who was also the 1413 ‘ 
very person who had prevailed on Richard to put himself 
into his hands, and had then treacherously surrendered him 
to his rival. Henry, however, now gave this powerful noble 
deep offence, by refusing him permission to ransom Morti¬ 
mer, who was nearly related to him, and who, as has bepn 
already mentioned, was taken prisoner by Glendower. 
Despising his jealousy of the young earl of March, indignant 
at his ingratitude, and conscious of his own power, Northum¬ 
berland sent the king a formal defiance, charging him with 
having obtained the crown by perjury and murder, and 
with an arbitrary and illegal exercise of the power thus 
nefariously obtained, disowning all allegiance to him, and de¬ 
claring open war against him. Henry levied a force to meet 
his rebel subject, and the two armies meet at Shrewsbury, 
each consisting of about 14,000 men. The rebel force 
w T ould have been larger had time been allowed for Glen¬ 
dower to join it, as he was hastening to do, and had 
not Northumberland been suddenly taken ill, so that a 
division remained with him, while his son Hotspur under¬ 
took, with the remainder, to give battle to the royalists. 

The battle was obstinately contested. On the one side 
Hotspur and Douglas, to whom the Percies had given his 
liberty, and who now fought on their side, performed pro¬ 
digies of valour. On the other, Henry himself, and his 
youthful son, who, on this day, though only fifteen years 
of age, gave ample promise of his future renown, showed 
themselves intrepid knights and skilful generals, but their 
exertions would probably have been fruitless if Percy had 
not been slain by a random arrow, and his men were too 
much disheartened by the loss of their leader to maintain 
the combat. On his fall they gave way, many were slain 
and many were taken. Douglas fell into the king’s hands, 
wdio treated him, as a foreigner, with courtesy ; but the 
English nobles, who had fought under Percy’s banner, and 
who were taken prisoners, he put to death as traitors. 

He now flattered himself that he had put down all his 
enemies ; but he was deceived; no one had ever more cause 
to say, 

“ Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” 


168 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1399s— 

1413. 


Enemies were continually rising up on all sides, and 
nothing hut the want of concert between them saved him 
from being overwhelmed. One insurrection was raised by the 
earl of Nottingham and the archbishop of York; but they 
were seized and delivered up to Henry, who, in spite of the 
remonstrances of judge Gascoyne, who urged that they had 
a right to be tried by their peers, put them both to death by 
the hand of the executioner. Another was excited by the 
earl of Northumberland, who fell in battle against the king’s 
forces ; and so many other conspiracies were formed by per¬ 
sons of inferior rank, believing or pretending to believe that 
Richard was not actually dead, that at last an act was passed, 
making it a capital crime to allege that he was still alive. 

It was not to be expected that the reign of a sovereign 
whose position was at all times so critical, could pass without 
his parliament taking advantage of his difficulties; accord¬ 
ingly we find that the commons (who had the chief occasion 
to struggle for their privileges, as their equality with the 
lords, as members of the legislative body, was not yet com¬ 
pletely acknowledged) asserted their pretensions with con¬ 
stantly increasing vigour and success, establishing their right 
to freedom of debate, which had been grievously infringed 
by the imprisonment of Haxey, in the late reign, to a con¬ 
trol of the king’s ministers, and even of the details of the 
king’s expenditure of the revenue, and procuring a declara¬ 
tion from him that their advice and assent was requisite in 
the enactment of statutes. 

Douglas, the most valiant of the Scottish nobles, as has 
been mentioned, had become Henry’s prisoner at the battle 
of Shrewsbury; and, two or three years afterwards, he was 
relieved from all apprehension of any renewal of hostilities 
by Scotland by an accident which threw the heir to that 
kingdom into his power. His father, king Robert III., 
justly afraid of the unscrupulous ambition of his brother, 
the duke of Albany, who had already murdered his eldest 
son, sent his second son, afterwards king James I., to Prance 
for greater safety ; but the vessel in which the young prince 
sailed was taken by an English cruiser, and, though the two 
countries were at peace, Henry did not scruple to detain 
him in confinement, though he made some amends for the 
injustice of such conduct by giving him an excellent educa¬ 
tion. 


HENRY Y. 


169 


XX.] 

He had been king twelve years when the quarrels between a.d. 
the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, each of whom sought 1399— 
liis assistance, and offered to purchase it by enabling him to 
recover some of the provinces which had belonged to his 
predecessors, induced him to think of repeating the attempts 
of Edward upon Erance. He made a treaty with the duke 
of Burgundy, and sent his second son, Thomas, duke of 
Clarence, with a moderate force into Normandy. But his 
own health began to decay so rapidly that he was unable to 
prosecute farther any enterprise in that kingdom. 

Before he died he was anxious to procure a parliamentary 
settlement of the crown on his posterity ; and, as the earl of 
March, the nearest heir of Edward III., could only claim 
through his mother, he himself projected the introduction of 
the Salic law into England, and was desirous that the act 
to be passed should exclude his daughters from the succes¬ 
sion. But the claim of the English monarehs to the throne 
of France, which depended wholly on the rights of Edward 
the Third’s mother, Isabella, was still popular in the king¬ 
dom, and it was felt that the establishment of such a rule 
in England must be for ever fatal to any reassertion of that 
claim, so that he was forced to consent to a more general 
settlement of the throne on his posterity. He had been 
subject to epileptic fits, and their increasing violence 
gradually undermined his health, till in March, 1413, he died, 
at Westminster, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the 
fourteenth of his reign, leaving behind him the reputation of 
an ambitious and unscrupulous, but vigorous and able prince, 
but not having lived long enough to efface, by the prosperity 
of his administration, or the renown of his achievements, the 
recollection of the crimes by which he had obtained and 
established his authority. 


CHAPTER XX. 

HENRY Y. 

\ 

If we are to take our impressions of history from perhaps 1413— 
the most universally known of all Shakespeare’s plays, in 1422. 
which, no doubt, he followed the early chroniclers, we must 



A.D. 

14L3- 

1422. 


170 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

believe that the youth of the new sovereign had been spent 
in one unvaried round of lawless profligacy and debauchery, 
which he, all the time, cherished a fixed purpose of abandon¬ 
ing as soon as his father’s death should change his condition 
of a subject into one invested with the graver duties and 
responsibilities of a king. But (though we might support 
this view by the somewhat parallel case of Frederic the 
Great, the dissipated childishness of whose early years forms 
a similar contrast to the severe energy which distinguished 
him as a ruler; whose youthful friends calculated, as securely 
as Falstaff himself, on a golden age of riot and licentiousness; 
and who, like him, found themselves completely deceived in 
their expectations, and summarily discarded) the certain 
facts of his career in his father’s reign are sufficient to prove 
that the tales which our great dramatist has stereotyped in 
all our minds are gross exaggerations, though not wholly 
without foundation, as is proved by the incident in which 
chief justice Gascoyne was concerned. It is recorded that, 
w T hen one of his friends was brought before the chief justice 
for some offence, the prince appeared by his side to give 
countenance to his cause, imperiously demanding his release ; 
and, when his demand was disregarded, that he drew his 
sword, and seemed to threaten the judge with personal 
violence ; but Gascoyne, undismayed by his rank, at once 
committed him to prison for his contempt of the king’s 
court, and he had sufficient sense and good feeling to confess 
the impropriety of his conduct, and to submit to its punish¬ 
ment. 

It is quite certain that his affability and generosity of 
disposition had already gained for him universal popularity 
with the multitude, and that the intrepidity and military 
skill, of which he had given proof at Shrewsbury, and in the 
tedious campaigns w r hich had broken the power of Glendower, 
had led the more reflecting part of the community to form 
high expectations of national glory and prosperity under his 
sw r ay. His first acts strengthened this favourable impression. 
He continued in office the most trusted ministers of his 
father (who had been a prince of great sagacity and dis¬ 
cernment of character), and received judge Gascoyne into 
his especial favour, bidding him continue to exercise the 
same intrepid impartiality in the administration of justice 
that he had himself experienced ; and he released the earl 
of March, wdiom his father, from jealousy of his superior 


XX. J HEXRY V. 171 

claim to the throne, had constantly kept in confinement, and 
treated him with uniform friendship and confidence. 

It is probable that from the moment of his accession he 
contemplated a renewal of the war with France ; but. some 
of the internal affairs of his own country first demanded his 
attention, and one of his first steps was to sign a truce for 
a year with that kingdom. The sect of the Lollards was 
increasing in number and power, and, not content with 
reforming the Church alone, promulgated political opinions 
which were dangerous to the constitution; and it was now 
more formidable from being headed by a baron of high cha¬ 
racter and considerable wealth and influence, sir John Old- 
castle, who, from a barony possessed by his wife, was also 
called lord Cobham. Archbishop Arundel was a bigot, 
inclined to scruple at no severity calculated in his opinion 
to promote the interests of the Church ; and the doctrines 
and proceedings of the Lollards were such that it was not 
difficult to persuade Henry, who, like most princes and 
statesmen, looked more at the political than at the religious 
aspect of the question, that such a sect must be put down. 
The king, however, who had a personal regard for Oldcastle 9 , 
determined to try the gentle arts of persuasion in the first 
place, and himself endeavoured by arguments to convince 
the knight of his errors; but his opinions were too deeply 
rooted to be shaken even by a royal controversialist, and at 
last, though with great reluctance, Henry allowed the pri¬ 
mate to proceed according to the severe statute passed in 
his father’s reign. Oldcastle was tried for heresy, convicted, 
and condemned to the flames ; but he escaped from the 
Tower, where he was confined, and collected a numerous 
body of followers, with whose aid he endeavoured to seize 
the person of the king and to make himself master of 
London; but the king secured the gates of the city, and 
easily dispersed the insurgents. Some were executed; but 
Oldcastle himself escaped. A few years afterwards, encou¬ 
raged by a Scottish inroad, he emerged from his conceal¬ 
ment, and tried to excite a second insurrection; but, when 
he found that the Scots were repelled, he fled into Wales, 
where he was taken prisoner, and, as an addition to his former 


9 In the plays before the time of Shakespeare, which had for their subject 
the riotous habits of prince Henry, the character which he attributes to FalstafF 
was assigned to sir John Oldcastle. The real sir John FalstafF, as will be seen 
hereafter, was in truth a valiant knight, distinguished in the French wars. 


A.D. 

1413— 
1422. 


172 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. sentence, was condemned to be bung as a traitor before he 
1413— was burnt as a heretic. His fanaticism must at last have 
1422, amounted to something like insanity, for at the gallows he 
assured his followers that he should rise again the third 
day ; and the failure of this prophecy not only threw -dis¬ 
credit on the prophet, but was for some time a material 
discouragement to the further spread of his doctrines ; while 
the proved treasonableness of some of his principles assisted 
those who were too glad to confound heresy with disloyalty 
to procure the passing of more severe laws for the suppres¬ 
sion of all opposition to the Church, with which they w T ere 
enabled to assert with some plausibility that the safety of the 
constitution and of the throne was identified. Yet the very 
parliament which passed these laws must have been greatly 
/ imbued with Wickliffe’s political principles, for, when the 
king demanded a supply for the war with Prance, which he 
was meditating, they urged him, as they had formerly urped 
his father, to seize all the ecclesiastical revenues in the 
kingdom, and to apply them to the necessities of the state. 

1414. The condition of Prance at this moment was such as 
might well have tempted a prince even less under the in¬ 
fluence of historical recollections and of personal ambition 
to attack it. The king, Charles VI., was sunk in a state of 
hopeless imbecility, the dauphin was wholly devoted to that 
course of debauchery which before the end of the next year 
put an end to his life, and the most powerful princes and 
nobles kept the nation in a continued ferment by their 
quarrels and struggles for power and superiority. To such 
a height did these miserable animosities rise that the duke 
of Burgundy caused his partisans to assassinate the duke of 
Orleans in the public street; and, some years after the 
time of which we are now speaking, he himself was assas¬ 
sinated in the presence of the dauphin. 

Henry availed himself of these divisions to negotiate with 
the leaders of both the principal parties ; the adherents of 
Burgundy, and those of the late duke of Orleans, w T ho were 
known as the Armagnacs, from the title of the count d’Ar- 
magnac, his father-in-law. He prolonged the existing truce 
till February, 1415, and amused the duke of Burgundy with 
a proposal to marry his daughter; while of the royalist 
party he demanded the hand of the king’s daughter, the 
princess Katharine, with an enormous dowry, and the 
restitution of many of the largest and richest provinces of 


HENRY V. 


173 


France, which at one time or another had belonged to the 
English kings. The French government was willing to 
agree to many of the conditions required, and even to cede 
Aquitaine to England, but he refused to submit to any 
abatement of his claims, and in March, 1415, broke oft the 
negotiations which he had probably only commenced with a 
view to get time to complete his preparations, and declared war 
against France. He was delayed a few months by the dis¬ 
covery of a conspiracy on the part of his own cousin, the 
earl of Cambridge, to place the earl of March on the throne. 
An inquiry into the circumstances resulted in the acquittal 
of March himself of all knowledge of the conspiracy, and in 
the condemnation and execution of Cambridge; but it con¬ 
sumed so much time that it was the middle of August 
before the king sailed from Southampton, and landed at the 
mouth of the Seine with 30,000 men. He at once laid 
siege to Harfleur, a town of great military strength and 
commercial importance, on the right bank of the river. So 
vigorous was the resistance which it made that it detained 
him above a month before its walls, and the unwholesome¬ 
ness of the neighbouring marshes brought on disease in his 
army, aggravated by immoderate indulgence in the fruit with 
which the country abounded, that cost him almost as many 
men as the casualties of war. It is especially recorded that 
he employed cannons in this siege, which terrified the citi¬ 
zens by the vast stones which they threw into the town ; 
and, perhaps, this may be looked upon as the first certain 
instance of their use in modern warfare. It is probable 
that in the infancy of the gunner’s art they caused more 
alarm than damage, for the same piece could only be fired a 
very few times in a day; and they were too cumbrous, and 
too difficult to be moved to be as yet available for field 
warfare. Sending his sick and wounded back to England, 
and leaving a strong garrison in Harfleur, he quitted that 
place at the beginning of October at the head of only half 
the number of men that he had brought with him not two 
months before. Prudence would have dictated contentment 
with the advantage already gained, and a suspension of fur¬ 
ther operations till the succeeding year; but he conceived 
his honour concerned in avoiding all appearance of timidity, 
and determined to penetrate to Calais to pass the winter in 
that fortress. The French repeated the tactics of Philip 
before the battle of Crecy. When Henry arrived on the 


A.D. 

] 41 :i— 
1422 . 


A.D. 

1413 - 

1422 . 


174 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

banks of the Somme be found the bridges broken down, 
the right bank of the river guarded, and his own army 
watched by one infinitely greater in numbers, and more 
superior still in its condition, and in cavalry, which in those 
days constituted the main force of every army. He marched 
up the left bank for many days ; at last, on the 19th of 
October, he found an unguarded ford near the town of St. 
Quentin; without a moment’s delay he crossed the river, 
and proceeded on his inarch towards Calais. 

The nominal command of the French army belonged to the 
lord d’Albret, the constable. But there were present also 
several princes of the blood who thought that their rank ex¬ 
empted them from obeying the commands of any leader; and 
who agreed with him in nothing but his rashness and presump¬ 
tion. There was in that host one man of great military 
experience and reputation, earned in the Italian wars, the 
marshal Bourcicault: but his advice and warnings were dis¬ 
regarded, as well as all the lessons that might have been 
learnt from Crecy and from Poitiers. At this last battle 
the duke de Berri had been actually present in his boyhood, 
and the only instruction the military council derived from 
the disasters of the previous age was conveyed in his exhor¬ 
tation not to permit the king to be concerned in the ap¬ 
proaching conflict, because it was better to lose the battle 
than the battle and the king too. Not that in reality they 
had any idea of losing the battle. They were so confident 
of the result that they sent a letter to the king to inform 
him that they intended to fight him, and to offer him the 
choice of time and place. He replied that he should march 
straight to Calais, and that they would find him at all times 
ready for battle should they attempt to bar his road. But, 
in spite of this spirited reply, he was in fact so conscious of 
his danger that he offered to make peace, reducing his de¬ 
mands to the restitution of Gruienne and Ponthieu, and 
being willing to take a smaller dowry with the princess. 
But the French princes refused to cede him any territories 
whatever; and demanded the surrender of Harfleur, and the 
abandonment of all his pretensions to the French throne, as 
the only condition on which they would grant him leave to 
pursue his march. He disdained terms which seemed to 
liim to involve a loss of honour, and pressed onwards. They 
pursued him, marching on a line nearly parallel to his own; 
and, as he was forced to turn a little out of his way in order 


HENRY Y. 



lti) 


to avoid Peronne and other fortresses of less importance, 
they got before him; and on the night of the 24th he 
found them posted in his front, near the village of Agincourt. 
His army was now reduced to about 12,000 men. The 
French had no less than 14,000 cavalry, and their entire 
force amounted to at least five times the number of the 
English. Many of the contemporary authors double this 
disproportion; but it was not their number alone that made 
the French army so imposing. In that splendid host were 
three of the king’s sons, and the king of Sicily. AVith the 
single exception of the duke of Burgundy, all the princes of 
royal blood, all the nobles of the greatest military reputa¬ 
tion and the widest territorial influence were there; all 
had hastened to the spot which was to restore their brilliancy 
to the standards tarnished at Crecy and Poitiers, eager to 
bear their share in the certain triumph of the morrow. 

And truly, if fearless valour could alone have ensured the 
victory, well might Henry have despaired ; but, fortunately 
for his small band, his enemies were destitute of military 
skill, discipline, or obedience. The night was wet and cold, 
and when the day dawned, it was seen that the constable 
had marshalled his dense battalions between two woods, on 
a plain so narrow as to allow no space for extending his front 
or manoeuvring his cavalry, while the ground in front had 
been so broken up by foraging parties during the night, and 
by the rain, as to render that splendid branch of his army 
almost immovable and useless. Bemembering that at Crecy 
and Poitiers the French had been the assailants, he deter¬ 
mined now to receive the attack. His army was divided into 
three large bodies under separate commanders. But the 
French nobles, feeling sure that the front line would be the 
only one engaged, and eager to bear a part in the contest, 
quitted their men, and all pressed forward to what they ex¬ 
pected would be the post of honour: thus preventing the 
infantry and archers from taking up the position assigned 
to them by the constable. 

It was about ten o’clock on the 25th of October 
when Henry, having heard mass, and having addressed a short 
speech of encouragement to his soldiers, dismounted from 
his horse, and on foot led his men against the enemy. Twice 
he halted to allow them time to take breath and to dress 
their line; and after the second halt, as they were now 
within shot of the French ranks, the whole army raised a 


A.D. 

1413 — 
1422 . 


/ 


176 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [OH. 

a.d. shout, the archers poured forth a volley, and the battle 
1413 — p e g an- Henry had commanded each archer to supply him- 
i422, self with a stake pointed at each end, which was easily fixed in 
the ground, (so that the whole body could retire, if there 
were need, behind an impregnable palisade,) and easily re¬ 
moved, so as to form no obstacle to their advance. The 
count de Yendome, with above 2000 men-at-arms, prepared 
to imitate the charge of Eandolph at Bannockburn, hoping 
to trample them down by the superior weight of his cavalry ; 
but he was received with such a storm of arrows that num¬ 
bers refused to face it, and turned their backs. Many of 
the horses stuck fast in the deep clay, many were slain; and 
not above 160 horsemen ever reached the spot where the 
archers were standing. The archers retired behind their 
stakes, and they themselves by their nearer approach were 
only the more exposed to their deadly aim. They retreated 
in disorder; the archers dropped their bows, sprang forward 
from behind their barricade, rushing on the retreating foe, 
slaughtered them without mercy, and quickly retired into 
their former position: then, taking up their stakes, they 
advanced with the rest of the army upon the enemy, whom 
the attack already repelled had thrown into entire confusion. 
Their very numbers impeded them, crowded as they were 
in one disorderly mass; and the second and third lines, des¬ 
titute of their commanders, who were fighting in the front, 
stood still in motionless helplessness, ignorant how to sup¬ 
port or assist their comrades. Individual knights displayed, 
as the warriors of their nation at all times have done, the 
most brilliant valour. The duke d’Alen^n in his last 
charge slew the duke of York, and cleft the crown upon the 
• king’s helmet. And many another knight and noble com¬ 
pelled Henry to fight hard for his own life, and to give his 
followers an example of personal courage and unwearied ex¬ 
ertion ; but method, discipline, and order, there were none 
in the French ranks. When the English, having utterly 
broken the first line, reached the second, disheartened by its 
defeat and embarrassed by its flying relics, the third, 
though more numerous than the whole army of their ene¬ 
mies, fled without striking a blow. At that moment a small 
squadron 1 under a Burgundian knight, Eobinet de Bonner- 
viile, who was afterwards severely punished by the duke of 

1 Most accounts call them peasants. Sismondi, a corps d’aimee. Yol. xii. 
p. 487. 


HENRY V. 


177 


XX.] 

Burgundy for his exploit, broke in on the English rear, and be¬ 
gan to pillage the baggage. They were soon put to flight; 
but on their first appearance, Henry, dismayed at the attack 
of this new enemy, of whom he could not ascertain the 
strength, gave orders to slay the prisoners, and many were 
put to the sword before it was ascertained that there was 
no danger to be apprehended; then the order was recalled, 
and the. rest were saved to enrich their captors by their 
ransom. 

Such was the battle of Agincourt, the last and the most 
fatal to the French of those great victories which make the 
history of the middle ages appear so marvellous to a modern 
reader. The Welsh captain, David Gam, whom Henry had 
sent to reconnoitre the enemy on the preceding night, is 
said to have reported their numbers as enough to be killed, 
enough to be taken prisoners, and enough to run away; 
and the killed and the prisoners furnished a melancholy 
catalogue for their countrymen. Besides the inferior sol¬ 
diers, 8000 men of gentle birth lay stretched upon the plain ; 
and among them seven princes of the blood royal, and 120 
great territorial lords. Among thousands of prisoners of the 
ordinary class were counted 1500 of knightly rank, with the 
dukes of Orleans and Bourbon at their head; and France 
seemed at one blow deprived of all the leaders under whom 
she might any more hope to resist her conqueror or retrieve 
her fortune. 

The next day Henry continued his march to Calais, and 
returned to England, where he was received with enthu¬ 
siastic joy by the whole nation; but the finances of the 
kingdom were exhausted for the time, and a truce was con¬ 
cluded between the two nations, which lasted nearly two 
years. The interval was judiciously employed by Henry 
in promoting the commercial prosperity of his people by 
wise regulations for the encouragement of trade, and by a 
treaty with Flanders, of equal benefit to both countries. 
At the same time he was carrying on negotiations with the 
different parties in France, to whom the misfortunes of 
their nation had not taught the necessity of union, but 
who all showed themselves equally willing to purchase the 
triumph of their party by the betrayal of the interests of 
their country. The palace itself was divided by faction. 
The queen, isabel of Bavaria, claimed the regency of the 
kingdom during the imbecility of her husband, in oppo- 

N 


A.b. 

1413— 
1422. 


178 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

$ 

a.d. sition to the new dauphin, and, by the aid of the duke 
j 413 '— of Burgundy, for a while obtained the chief authority in 

4 ""“ the capital. The duke of Burgundy, to whom Tlanders 
belonged, was in close alliance with Henry; but, as the 
councillors of the dauphin, to whom the greater part of the 
kingdom adhered, were only the more hostile to him for 
that circumstance, he resolved to renew the war, and in 
August, 1417, again landed in Normandy. In the course 
of the next year he made himself master of many important 
towns, still continuing to negotiate, and making and re¬ 
ceiving various proposals for a lasting peace. The terms 
were almost agreed upon, when they were broken off by a 
reconciliation, which took place between the duke of Bur¬ 
gundy and the dauphin, that seemed to have for its object 
a union of the whole nation against the common enemy, 
but which proved only a trap laid for the duke of Burgundy, 
who was shortly afterwards assassinated by the dauphin’s 
officers, in his presence, in an interview at Montereau. 
This atrocity increased the distractions of Trance, and laid 
it completely defenceless at the feet of Henry. The new 
duke of Burgundy, thinking of nothing but of revenging 
his father’s murder upon its authors, succeeded to his 
place in the Trench councils with increased power, and in 
1420 made peace with Henry, in the name of the whole 
kingdom. 

In this treaty, which was concluded on the 21st of 
May, it was agreed that Henry should marry the princess 
Katharine; that he should be declared heir to Charles VI., 
after whose death the two nations should be for ever united 
under one king; and that the armies of Charles and of 
the duke of Burgundy should combine with the English 
to compel the dauphin to accede to this arrangement.. 

The marriage was celebrated with great pomp on the 
2nd of June ; and then, as the party of the dauphin was 
still in possession of many large districts of the kingdom, 
and of many important fortresses, Henry returned to 
England with his queen, to have her crowned at West¬ 
minster, and to collect another army to complete the re¬ 
duction of his newly-acquired inheritance. He had still a 
hard task to accomplish, for the common people were more 
patriotic than their rulers, and viewed their threatened sub¬ 
jection to a people, whom they had learnt to look upon 
as their national enemies, with an indignation which was 


XX.] HENRY V. 179 

increased by the arrogance of the English, who would not 
stoop to conciliate those of whom they considered them¬ 
selves the conquerors. They were encouraged in their 
resistance by the event of a battle at Bauge, in Anjou, in 
which 7000 Scots, in the service of the dauphin, under the 
command of the earl of Buchan, defeated and slew the 
duke of Clarence ; but this was only a momentary gleam of 
success, and, on Henry’s return, he proceeded steadily in 
his work of conquest. Town after town was taken, when 
on a sudden he was attacked by some disease, which is 
imperfectly described by the historians of the day, but 
which baffled all medical skill; and on the 31st of August, 
1122, he died, with his last breath entreating his friends to 
continue to his son, an infant nine months old, the same 
faithful loyalty which he himself had always experienced, 
leaving the regency of Erance to his next brother, the duke 
of Bedford, and that of England to his younger brother, 
the duke of Gloucester, whom he enjoined, above all things, 
to preserve their alliance with the duke of Burgundy, and 
not to release the princes of the blood, who had been taken 
prisoners at Agincourt, till his son had arrived at full age, 
and was competent to govern his kingdom himself. 

In his character as a ruler Henry greatly resembled 
Edward III. A similar ambition excited him to the same 
dream of conquest, and was supported by equal courage 
and military skill, and by perhaps even greater statesman¬ 
like prudence and sagacity. Owiug to the imbecility of 
the Erench monarch, and the factions which in consequence 
distracted France, he met with even greater success; and 
it is likely that, if he had lived, he might for a time have 
completed the union of the two crowns. His greater 
authority and pre-eminent reputation would probably have 
averted the disasters from which the duke of Bedford, 
brave and able as he was, could not preserve his deputed 
power; but such a result, however flattering to the national 
pride, would have been a grievous calamity to both nations. 
It might have led to the dismemberment of Erance; but 
it could never have tended to the permanent aggrandize¬ 
ment of England. The English subjects of his son, who 
saw town after town, and province after province slip¬ 
ping from their grasp, may have repined at the loss of 
their victorious king, thinking, in the spirit of the ancient 
poet,— 


A.D. 

1413— 
1422. 


A.D. 

1H3— 
1422. 


1422- 

1435. 


180 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

“ Nimium vobis Romana propago 
Visa potens, Superi, propria hsec si dona fuissent 2 .” 

But we, judging after the event which we can estimate 
more correctly by being further removed from it, may 
rather pronounce that, as he lived long enough for his own 
glory, so he died at a fortunate moment for the prosperity 
of his natural dominions, and the safety of his anticipated 
inheritance. 


CHAPTER XXL 


HENRY TI. 

It is singular, considering the general propensity, and, we 
may almost say, desire, that exists among mankind to 
believe the qualities of the mind, as well as those of the 
person, in some degree hereditary, and to trace in the 
children not only the lineaments, but the disposition, the 
virtues, and the talents of the parents, to observe how 
greatly such a theory is at variance with the fact, and how 
very seldom in the history of the world an illustrious father 
has left behind him a son qualified by equal or similar 
abilities to imitate his example, or to adorn his memory. 
But though the resemblance, which we eagerly look for, 
usually fails to be found, the contrast has scarcely ever 
been so strongly marked as in the case of the sovereign, 
whose reign we are now proceeding to describe. His father 
had been an ambitious and valiant prince, of great genius 
for war and for government, gracious and magnanimous, 
but, like conquerors in general, indifferent to human suf¬ 
fering and bloodshed when necessary to the execution of 
his plans. The son was humble and peaceful, utterly des¬ 
titute of commanding abilities, and at times even of the 
natural faculties which are given to almost all the human 
race; meek and pious, seeking the only distinction which 
keeps his name alive in the respectful recollection of later 
generations in his zeal for religion and education, and in 

2 The words of Virgil, in lamentation for Marc^llus, who likewise died in 
early manhood. Translated hy Dryden :— 

“ The Gods too high had raised the Roman state, 

Were but their gifts as permanent as great!” 



HENRY VI. 


181 


XXI.] 

the noble colleges 3 , which he founded for their promotion. 
One who, in more quiet or more ignorant times, would pro¬ 
bably have been canonized as a saint, but who, in any age, 
would have been unfit to rule a kingdom, and never so 
unfit as at a time when, together with his crown, he inherited 
instant war abroad, the result of his father’s ambition, and, 
at a later period, civil war at home, the still more bitter fruit 
of his grandfather’s usurpation. 

He was, as has been already said, but nine months old 
when he became king of England; and his father had 
bequeathed his guardianship to the earl of Warwick, the 
most powerful baron and the most renowned warrior in 
the kingdom. This nomination was ratified by the parlia¬ 
ment, which had greatly increased in power and authority 
under the two last kings, one being occupied in defending 
his defective title against conspirators, and the other being 
compelled by the want of supplies for his foreign wars to 
conciliate the good will of those who had the pow r er of 
granting or withholding them; but it refused to ratify his 
other appointments, or to admit his constitutional right to 
make them; and, instead of calling either the duke of 
Bedford or Gfloucester regent, it named the former pro¬ 
tector of the kingdom, giving him a title, as was conceived, 
of inferior authority, while the other was to be his deputy 
during his absence. 

These arrangements -were scarcely completed, when 
Charles VI. died. He was buried at St. Denis; and at 
the conclusion of the ceremony the herald invited the 
bystanders to pray for the soul of the late monarch, and 
for the prosperity of the new one, Henry, king of France 
and England. On the other hand, the Armagnac party 
saluted the dauphin as king, by the title of Charles VII. 
He at once assumed the royal authority, issued ordinances 
as the sovereign, and was gladly acknowledged at Poitiers, 
Rochelle, and other important towns in the west, though 
the joy with which he was received at Rochelle was some¬ 
what damped by the falling in of the hotel where he was, 
which was unable to support the weight of the crowds that 
flocked thither to do him homage. Many persons were 
killed, and he himself was slightly injured by the accident. 
Charles was at this time nearly nineteen years old, ot an 


A.D. 

1422— 

1435. 


Nov., 

1422. 


3 la 1441 he founded Eton College, and King’s College, Cambridge. 


A.D. 

1422- 

1435. 


182 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

indolent and careless character, not easily nor deeply affected 
by either reverses or successes, but for many years wholly 
abandoned to indolence and pleasure. At a subsequent 
period he seemed on a sudden to have entirely changed hi3 
character; and for the last twenty years of his reign he 
displayed as much energy in reforming abuses, and re-es¬ 
tablishing order and prosperity in his kingdom, as he had 
previously shown indifference to his own disgrace, and to 
his people’s misery. 

It was evident that the substitution of a king who was at 
the head of an opposing army, for one who was so wholly in 
the hands of the English as the late sovereign, greatly 
added to their difficulties in the prosecution of the war; 
and Bedford immediately applied himself with great pru¬ 
dence and address to counterbalance this unfavourable event 
by new and important alliances. The chief support of the 
English in Erance was the duke of Burgundy, who was 
likely to be more hostile to Charles VII., whom he looked 
upon as the immediate cause of his father’s murder, than he 
had been to Charles VI.; and Bedford hoped not only to 
cement the alliance with him more firmlv than ever, bv 
marrying one of his sisters, but also to make him the means 
of gaining over the duke of Brittany, by engaging him to 
give another sister in marriage to the comte de Richemont, 
the duke’s brother. It was natural for him to derive fresh 
hopes from the success of these negotiations; but, though 
he was far from suspecting it, the ground was, from the very 
first, hollow beneath his feet; for, at the very moment that 
these two French dukes were thus forming alliances with 
him, they were looking forward to the moment when they 
should renounce them, and making a secret treaty by which 
they agreed to remain friends to one another after they 
should be reconciled to Charles VII. In like manner, though 
the Barisians sent a deputation to England to do homage to 
Henry, and to solicit reinforcements to enable them to ex¬ 
pel the adherents of Charles from the Isle of France, the 
main body of the citizens murmured at the foreign yoke to 
which their leaders submitted, and a conspiracy was formed, 
in which even some members of the deputation were con¬ 
cerned, to deliver the city to its native king. 

Bedford also released James, the young king of Scotland, 
who had been detained in England ever since the time when he 
fell into the hands of Henry IV., and united him in marriage 


HENRY YI. 


183 


XXI.] 

to a princess of the English royal family, in the hope that, when 
established on his throne, he would be able to recal those of 
his subjects who formed a very important part of Charles’s 
army. 

The war, however, went on for some time very languidly. 
It could hardly be said that there was a regular army on 
either side; and the principal military operations, if they 
deserve such a title, were executed by independent captains, 
whose attachment to either party was little more than 
nominal, and whose main object was to maintain their men 
and to enrich themselves by the pillage of the district in which 
they were stationed. The leaders of both parties, seeking 
to gain the affections of the nation, endeavoured, as far as 
they could, to remedy the evils which such a state of affairs 
produced; but their efforts and commands had but slight 
effect, and seldom had any country been reduced to a more 
miserable condition than France was now by the combina¬ 
tion of foreign and civil war. Pillage and conflagration raged 
almost unchecked over the whole country. Towns were 
destroyed, agriculture was neglected, the population wasted 
away. In Paris itself, wolves roamed at night, preying on 
the carcasses which murder or famine left to lie unheeded 
in the streets. 

At the end of the year 1423, the earl of Salisbury gained 
a considerable advantage near the town of Crevant, in 
Burgundy, routing a strong force of Scots, and taking 
prisoner Stuart, the constable of Scotland; and the next 
year Bedford himself defeated lord Buchan in a more im¬ 
portant battle at Yerneuil. He had barely 10,000 men, and 
the French and Scots numbered 18,000, but the victory was 
complete ; nearly 5000 of the enemy, including Buchan him¬ 
self, were slain. Many powerful nobles were taken prisoners, 
and the cause of Charles appeared desperate. At this crisis 
the headstrong folly of the duke of Gloucester gave the first 
check to his brother’s hitherto successful administration.' 
Jaqueline, the countess of Hainault and Holland, had 
married the duke de Brabant, a cousin of the duke of 
Burgundy; but, as he was only a sickly boy, she got weary 
of him, quitted him and fled to England, where, without 
waiting for a divorce from Borne, she married the duke of 
Gloucester. The duke of Burgundy was greatly offended 
at the injury thus done to his cousin, whom he encouraged 
to resist the divorce, and to retain possession of his wife’s 


A.D. 

1422— 

1435. 


184 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. dominions, which he furnished him with troops to defend; 

I4 ?2- while the duke of Gloucester, on his side, sent over bodies 

1435 ‘ of English soldiers into Holland, employing in his own 
service those battalions which were required as reinforce¬ 
ments for the army of the king. Bedford was very indignant, 
and employed his uncle, the bishop of Winchester, who was 
soon afterwards known as the cardinal Beaufort, to remon¬ 
strate with his brother, but the only result was that enmity 
was created between Gloucester and the bishop. Gloucester 
challenged the duke of Burgundy to single combat, which 
was prevented by Bedford. Jaqueline herself was taken 
prisoner, but escaped; and, as a bull had arrived from the 
pope annulling her second marriage, she discarded all 
thoughts of Gloucester for the future, and came to an 
arrangement with the duke of Burgundy, surrendering to 
him at once some of her territories for an adequate pension, 
and declaring him heir of the rest; while Gloucester, on his 
part, married his mistress, Eleanor Cobham, and abandoned 
all claim upon Holland. 

But the seeds of ill will between the duke of Burgundy 
and England had now been sown. Even in September, 
1424, a truce had been made between France and Burgundy, 
which might perhaps have at once ripened into a permanent 
peace, if the king had not been too much surrounded by men 
whom the duke hated as the murderers of his father. At 
the same time the duke of Brittany was gained over by 
Charles, who made his brother, He Bichemont, constable of 
France, in the room of lord Buchan, who had been killed 
at Yerneuil, but Bedford invaded his duchy before he was 
able to put it in a posture of defence, and compelled him to 
return to the English alliance. 

Thus matters went on, the English party making slow 
but steady progress and meeting with no material check, 
except before Montargis, (where a natural son of the late 
duke of Orleans, celebrated afterwards as the count de 
Dunois 4 , with inferior forces defeated the earl of Warwick, 
and compelled him to raise the siege of the town,) till nearly 
the whole of France, north of the Loire, acknowledged 
Henry ; and Bedford felt himself strong enough to send the 

4 He was not created count de Dunois till 1439, but to avoid confusion I 
have given him the title by which he was afterwards known. He is the hero 
of the little ode, now become the French national hymn, of “Partant pour la 
Syrie;” and the father of the Dunois mentioned in the “ Quentin Durward.” 


HENRY VI. 


185 


XXI.] 

earl of Salisbury, tbe most skilful of the English commanders, 
to besiege Orleans, tbe only town of any importance remain¬ 
ing to Charles in that part of the kingdom. Orleans was a 
large and populous town, well provisioned, defended by a 
strong garrison, when, in October, 1428, Salisbury appeared 
before its walls with an army of 10,000 men. Shortly after¬ 
wards he was killed by a chance shot, and was succeeded in 
his command by the earl of Suffolk, who threw up strong 
redoubts at different points round the town, purposing 
to complete his intrenchments on the return of spring. 
He succeeded to a great extent in cutting off all supplies 
from the town, without the enemy being able to distress him 
in the same way. One convoy under the command of sir John 
Ealstaff, Dunois did attempt to intercept, but, though he 
had a much larger force, and also several guns, he was 
beaten off with considerable loss, while the chief injury 
that he inflicted on the English was borne by the barrels of 
herrings, which were shattered by his cannon-balls, and 
from which, as the field of battle was strewed with their 
contents, the conflict received the name of the Battle of 
Herrings. 

It seemed as if nothing could save Orleans, and it was felt 
on both sides that its fall would be decisive of the contest 
between the rival kings, when a deliverer arose to Erance 
from an unexpected quarter. In a small village called Dom- 
remy, near the borders of Lorraine and Champagne, there 
was a young girl of about twenty years of age, named Joan 
d’Arc, the daughter of a common peasant; the villagers 
generally espoused the cause of Charles, and from her 
childhood she had been accustomed to hear his pretensions 
discussed, his rights upheld, and his enemies denounced, till 
she, being of an enthusiastic disposition, had learned to feel 
a personal interest in his success. She had at all times deep 
feelings of religion, and her devotion had long had a tinge of 
fanaticism in it. From childhood she would spend the time, 
that her companions devoted to amusement, in plaiting gar¬ 
lands for St. Catharine and St. Margaret, of whose protec¬ 
tion she fancied herself to be the especial object; and at last 
she learned to believe herself favoured with visits and warn¬ 
ings from these celestial personages. As her native village 
lay near the Burgundian frontier, it was particularly exposed 
to the miseries of the war; and presently her constant re¬ 
flection on it, and her anxiety for its termination by Charles’s 


A.D. 

1422 — 
1435. 


A.D. 

1422- 

1435. 


186 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

recovery of liis rights, began to combine themselves with her 
religious aspirations, till she believed those rights to be the 
subject of the heavenly visions which now seemed to increase 
in frequency and importance. At last she fancied herself 
commissioned by Heaven to effect the deliverance of France ; 
and, the moment that she had adopted this idea, she began 
to seek means to put it in execution. Two gentlemen of 
the district were so struck with her earnestness, that they 
furnished her with the means of travelling to Chinon, in 
Touraine, where Charles at that time held his court. She 
cut her hair, assumed man’s clothes, and on horseback 
traversed the country till she arrived there. It is said that, 
though she had never seen the king, she at once distin¬ 
guished him from the surrounding courtiers; she fell at his 
feet and announced to him that St. Louis and Charlemagne 
were constant in their prayers for him, that Grod had taken 
pity on him and on his people, and that she was sent to 
raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct him to Rheims to 
be crowned, provided he would give her troops. 

The general distress of the nation had increased the 
ignorant superstition of the age, and the inclination to look 
to supernatural sources for the relief which human aid 
seemed unable to supply; so that the very extravagance of 
Joan’s pretensions procured them some degree of belief. 
The impression that she made by her first interview with 
Charles, was strengthened a few days afterwards by a story 
that she had required for her own use a sword buried behind 
the altar of St. Catharine, at Fierbois, marked with five 
crosses on the blade; and that such a sword as she described 
had been found. The multitude thought her a prophetess; 
the clergy set their face against her and pronounced her a 
witch, but no one in that age doubted that witches had 
great power; and, as it was evident that the boldness of her 
promises had raised the spirits of the people, the statesmen 
who surrounded Charles determined, whether she were pro¬ 
phetess or witch— 

“ Were she a power from heaven or blast from hell,” 

to employ her agency in the attempt to relieve Orleans, 
which now seemed on the point of falling. 

The king furnished her with a suit of armour, and with 
St. Catharine’s sword by her side, and bearing in her right 
hand a white standard sprinkled with fleur-de-lis, in the 


r 


XXI.] HENRY VI. 187 

centre of which was represented the Saviour of the world on 
his judgment-seat, surrounded by his angels, she proceeded 
to join the small army at Blois, which was preparing to 
endeavour to throw supplies into the besieged town. Joan 
could neither write nor read, but she caused letters to be 
written in her name to Henry, and also to the English 
generals, summoning them to retire from Orleans, and to 
restore to their lawful king all the towns which they had 
taken in Erance. Her summons was disregarded, but the 
tone of authority which she assumed, and the rumours of 
the proofs which she had given of the divine nature of her 
mission, were not without effect on the minds of the English 
soldiers. On the 28th of April she quitted Blois to escort 
a large supply of provisions to Orleans; the next day she 
arrived in front of a small outwork belonging to the English. 
She ordered all her soldiers to confess and receive the sacra¬ 
ment, expelled the disreputable camp-followers who hang 
upon every army, and then, surrounded by a small band of 
priests, she placed herself at the head of her troops, and led 
them on to the attack of the English fortification. The 
soldiers who guarded it were seized with a panic, they aban¬ 
doned it without striking a blow; and she conducted her 
party in triumph into the town. 

The Maid of Orleans, to give her the title earned by this 
exploit, sent at once for a fresh supply, and ordered that it 
should approach the town by the other bank of the Loire, 
on which the main body of the enemy’s army was stationed. 
She herself, with Dunois, led forth a squadron to protect its 
entrance, but there was no occasion for her exertions; the 
English were so dismayed that they made no attempt to 
stop it, hut remained inactive in their redoubts, and this 
second supply was brought with equal safety into Orleans. 

This success had been achieved by the mere terror of her 
name; but the garrison was so much encouraged by it, that 
they no longer hesitated to assume the offensive and to 
attack the English redoubts. She herself, with her standard 
in her hand, led the assault by the side of Dunois; and the 
next three days were days of continual battle, though the 
besiegers were too much dismayed to exhibit their wonted 
valour. The Maid herself was twice wounded, but she 
stanched the blood and returned to the field. A chance 
shot broke down a drawbridge on which Glansdale, one of 
the most resolute of the English captains, was standing with 


A.D. 

1422— 

1435. 


f 


A.D. 

1422- 

1435. 


188 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a large body of soldiers, the greater part of whom were 
drowned, and the rest taken prisoners; and on the 8th of 
May, only ten days since Joan had first appeared in front 
of Orleans, Suffolk, with the unanimous consent of the other 
leaders, raised the siege. He threw himself, with a portion 
of his army, into Jergeau; the Maid pursued him, attacked 
the place, and, though she was again wounded, pressed the 
siege with such vigour, that in ten days it surrendered, and 
Suffolk himself became her prisoner. Several other towns 
fell; some were abandoned by their garrisons even before 
they were attacked, and so completely was the spirit of the 
English broken, that when the French overtook and attacked 
a powerful division near the village of Patay, Ealstaff, the 
same general who at the battle of Herrings had beaten 
Dunois with an inferior force, now, with a great part of the 
division, fled at the first assault; and those who stood their 
ground were slain, with the exception of some of their com¬ 
manders, among whom were lord Talbot and lord Scales, 
who became prisoners. 

The council of Charles was not yet thoroughly united. 
The Maid pressed him earnestly to pursue his advantages, 
and to advance to Rheitns. She declared that she had been 
assured by her voices (so she called the warnings which she 
believed that the saints gave her), that Troyes would open 
its gates to him at his first appearance. The king and his 
most trusted generals hesitated; but the common soldiers 
were firm in their belief in her promises, and loudly demanded 
to be led forward. It was decided to take advantage of their 
enthusiasm. The army advanced; the citizens of Troyes 
rose on the English garrison, who were content to be allowed 
to retire with their arms and baggage, and Troyes, the very 
town in which the treaty had been signed which excluded 
Charles from the throne, now received him as its king. 
After one more week of triumph he arrived at Rheims, and, 
on the 17th of July, was crowned in the ancient cathedral 
with the holy oil, which, according to the story consecrated 
by the belief of 800 years, a pigeon had brought from heaven 
to Clovis on the first establishment of the monarchy. The 
Maid stood by him in complete armour with her standard in 
her hand. It was just, she said, that the banner which had 
borne the brunt should now share the triumph. At the 
conclusion of the ceremony she threw herself at his feet, 
embraced his knees, and, saluting him as king (before his 


HENRY VI. 


189 


XXI.] 

coronation she had given him no higher title than that of 
dauphin), she said that she had now accomplished her mission, 
and requested leave to return to her parents, and tend their 
sheep as she had done before. The generals, however, who 
recognized the value of her influence upon the soldiers, were 
unwilling to part with her; and she consented to remain, 
still eager to do what she could for her country, but no 
longer supported by a belief in her divine mission, or in the 
direct inspiration of her holy protectresses. 

Bedford’s situation, as regent of Trance for his nephew, 
was becoming very critical. The events of the last two 
months were evidently producing an effect on the mind of 
the duke of Burgundy, and leading him to think more 
seriously of reconciling himself to Charles ; while in England 
the parliament, weary of the war which was now ceasing to 
be productive of glory, could hardly be induced to grant him 
any supplies. Soldiers were unwilling to join a standard 
the defeat of which seemed to be ensured by the supernatural 
agency of witchcraft and magic ; and the only available body 
of men had been raised by his uncle, now the cardinal Beau¬ 
fort, to join the crusade against the followers of Huss in 
Bohemia. Bedford’s vigour and address rose with the occa¬ 
sion. He drew 5000 men from the garrisons of the Norman 
towns, persuaded his uncle to lend him his troops in despite 
of the indignant prohibition of the pope, and invited Philip 
of Burgundy to Paris, where he succeeded for the time in 
fixing his wavering fidelity; and thus, with a bold front, 
though with diminished means, he prepared for the ensuing 
campaign. But though the Maid’s own belief in her divine 
mission was extinguished, that of the soldiers and of the 
nation in general was not. Town after town came over to 
Charles. To check the spreading disaffection Bedford, with 
10,000 men, quitted Paris, and advanced to Montereau; 
but when he had arrived in front of Charles’s army he found 
his men too faint-hearted to make it prudent to come to a 
battle, and retraced his steps. The Trench hung upon his 
retreat, and advanced to the very gates of the capital. The 
Maid, ever in the front of the army, urged the soldiers to 
fill the fosse with fagots, and to scale the walls ; but it was 
too deep and too wide. She was again severely wounded. 
Charles himself showed no vigour of enterprise, and hardly 
common courage; and, yielding to the advice of his worth¬ 
less favourites, retired again upon the Loire with the larger 


A.D. 

1422— 
1435. 


190 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. half of his army. His unkingly pusillanimity disgusted his 
nobles ; and their indignation was skilfully taken advantage 
1435 ‘ of by Bedford, who, to fix the duke of Burgundy more per¬ 
manently in Henry’s interest, resigned to him the regency 
of France, and contented himself with the government of 
Normandy. The undaunted Maid still kept alive the courage 
of the French soldiers. But the most distinguished com¬ 
manders were with the king at Chinon; and she found her¬ 
self now associated with captains of a more ferocious and 
lower class, eager only for plunder, and little inclined to 
submit to the regulations which she persisted in enforcing. 
Ill omens seemed to warn her of impending disasters. St. 
Catharine’s sword shivered in her hand; her armour, which, 
in the triumphant march upon Paris, she had laid upon the 
tomb of St. Denis, fell into the hands of the English; and 
her mind, in which religion had at all times bordered on 
fanaticism, was peculiarly alive to such tokens of the future. 
But they did not shake her purpose of continuing to do her 
duty while she could. She threw herself into Compeigne, 
which was invested by the duke of Burgundy; and, heading 
a sally of the garrison, found herself deserted by her com¬ 
rades. Slowly she retreated, fighting gallantly, to the gates 
of the town. They had been closed by the fliers: before 
they could be opened to admit her she was a prisoner; and 
the general belief was that she had been designedly sacrificed 
by the jealousy of the governor. 

Hitherto the arms which Bedford had employed were 
honourable to himself, and to the cause which he supported. 
The tragedy which followed Joan’s capture was disgraceful 
to every one concerned in it; disgraceful to him and to his 
country, more disgraceful still to the university and clergy 
of- France, most disgraceful of all to the base and ungrateful 
Charles. That Bedford himself really believed the past suc¬ 
cesses of the Maid to be owing to witchcraft is no doubt true, 
and may be some palliation of, but no excuse for, his cruelty, 
or for his violation of all the rights of civilized war. But 
the Church of France had agreed in pronouncing her a 
deliverer sent from God; and the king had solemnly recog¬ 
nized her claims as such, and had been delivered from certain 
ruin by her heroic enthusiasm. 

She was a prisoner of war in the hands of the Burgundian 
captains ; but Bedford obtained possession of her by paying 
her captors an enormous ransom, and then instigated the 



HENRY YI. 


191 


XXI.] 

Sorbonne (the theological school of the university of Paris) a.d. 
to demand that she should be surrendered to the inquisition 1422 — 
to be tried on a charge of witchcraft. She was conducted to 
Rouen, and, at the beginning of the year 1431, subjected to 
a long examination before that detestable tribunal. But 
one Englishman, the cardinal Beaufort, sat among her judges: 
but the court was thronged with Bedford’s soldiers, who 
clamoured for her blood. The bishop of Beauvais presided ; 
but, though eager to gratify their savage revenge, no evidence 
of sorcery or heresy could be extracted from the modest, 
sensible, pious replies of the prisoner. She avowed her 
belief in the supernatural promptings which had been the 
cause of, and her support in, her past career; and her 
French judges were not ashamed to decide that it could noc 
have been God who desired the triumph of Charles VII., 
and to infer that she must therefore have been the agent of 
the devil. They pronounced that her constant receiving of 
the sacrament, and her assumption of masculine attire, were 
violations of the divine law ; and that, therefore, her asser¬ 
tion, that she adopted these practices in obedience to the 
command of the saints, must be an imposture; and, by 
threats of torture and death, they compelled her to acknow¬ 
ledge that it was such. On her confession they condemned 
her to perpetual imprisonment. 

But the malice of her enemies w r as not yet satisfied ; and, 
seeing that Charles was wholly indifferent to her fate, 
neither moving a man to rescue her from their hands, nor 
even addressing a remonstrance to those wdio were violating 
all the laws of war, inhuman as they were in those days, in 
this treatment of a prisoner, they determined to complete 
her destruction without delay. It was not usual for the 
inquisition to put to death any offenders but those who 
relapsed into their former heresies; and it was not easy 
for Joan, immured for ever in a dungeon, to be guilty of 
such an offence ; but they found that she repented of having 
discarded her male habiliments, and they replaced them in her 
dungeon in the hope that she would resume them. She fell 
into the snare, and was instantly brought before the reas¬ 
sembled court as a relapsed heretic, and condemned to the 
flames. On the 30th of May she was brought into the 
market-place at Rouen and burnt, in the midst of her 
mortal agony invoking the aid of the saints and of her 
Saviour. One Englishman, more merciful than his fellows. 


192 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. at her urgent entreaty, cut a piece of wood into the shape 
a cross for her, which she clasped to her bosom, and she 
1435. c ij e( j holding it firmly in her hands, while the name of Jesus 
was the last sound that her voice was heard to utter. 

I have been thus particular in recounting the fate of the 
Maid of Orleans, partly because history records no more 
romantic or marvellous career, and partly because (though 
her faith, no doubt, was tinged with fanaticism, and her 
reason in some degree disordered by superstitious enthu¬ 
siasm) no purer or nobler heroine adorns the annals of any • 
country; but I shall pass rapidly over the remaining inci¬ 
dents of the war. Many places were from time to time 
reduced by the French commanders ; many voluntarily re¬ 
turned to their allegiance. To animate the partisans who 
still remained to him, Bedford brought the youthful Henry 
to Paris and caused him to be crowned in the cathedral of 
Notre Dame ; but the ceremony, performed by an English 
prelate, failed of its effect: the tide of reaction had set in 
too strongly to be arrested; and an act of his own com¬ 
pleted the ruin of the cause he had so long upheld. In 
1432 his duchess, the sister of the duke of Burgundy, died; 
and, as he shortly after married another wife, Philip took 
occasion to represent his conduct as a slight to his sister’s 
memory, and talked so loudly of the affront thus offered to 
him, that it was apparent that he meant to make it a pre¬ 
text for deserting the English interests. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

HENRY YI. (CONTINUED). 

1435— In England the continued quarrels between the duke of 
14G1. Gloucester and the cardinal Beaufort produced an injurious 
effect by preventing Bedford from receiving any cordial 
support, or any important supplies or reinforcements; and 
he himself felt his health failing, and was rapidly losing his 
former energy. Peace began to be talked of, the pope 
offered his mediation, and in 1435 a congress assembled at 
Arras, whose deliberations, it was hoped, would restore that 
blessing to Europe; it was attended by ambassadors from 



HENRY VI. 


193 


XXII.] 

almost every country. The French offered to leave Henry 
in possession of Aquitaine and Normandy; but the cardinal, 
the chief of the English ambassadors, rejected the proffered 
terms with disdain, and quitted Arras. Before he did so, 
the duke of Bedford died, and Philip of Burgundy, consi¬ 
dering himself released by his death from all his engage¬ 
ments to the English, immediately reconciled himself to 
Charles, and signed a treaty acknowledging him as king of 
France, and promising to support his rights with all his 
power. 

The duke of York succeeded the duke of Bedford in his 
government in France; but before he arrived to take the 
command, Paris was lost. As they had only favoured the 
English as the friends of the Burgundian party, the news of 
the peace, made at Arras between Charles arid Philip, had 
encouraged the inhabitants of all the towns in the Isle of 
France to return to their allegiance to Charles. The feel¬ 
ing spread to Normandy, the province of all others most 
completely in the power of the English, and at last, encou¬ 
raged by the vigour with which the duke of Burgundy was 
preparing to fulfil the treaty into which he had lately 
entered, and to take part in the war, the citizens of Paris 
rose against lord Willoughby, who commanded the English 
garrison, drove him into the Bastille, and soon compelled 
him to capitulate on condition of being allowed to retire in 
safety and honour to Normandy. 

With the loss of Paris the English lost all chance of re¬ 
covering their footing in France, and even of long retaining 
the territories which they still possessed. The duke of 
York, and lord Talbot, who had recovered his freedom, dis¬ 
played great skill and valour, and gained some apparently 
important advantages ; but, in reality, their cause was stea¬ 
dily going backward : fresh negotiations were opened; but 
the French now offered terms so much less favourable than 
at Arras, that they were again rejected. In 1444 a truce 
between the tw r o nations for twenty-two months was agreed 
to; but it led to no permanent peace. In two or three 
years the war broke out again, and was one of almost un¬ 
varied disaster for the English. Dunois, commanding in 
the campaigns wdiich have rendered his name illustrious, 
speedily reduced the whole of Normandy: in 1451 he had 
equal success in Gruienne; and Calais and the insignificant 
towns of Guines and Ham, which depended upon it, were 

o 


A.D. 

1435— 

1461. 


194 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. the only places which still displayed the English standard, 
1430— •vyhich a t the beginning of this reign seemed destined to 
l461, float triumphantly over the whole country. 

While the affairs of England were thus going to ruin oil 
the Continent, they were not prospering much better at 
home. The quarrels between the duke of Gloucester and his 
uncle continued to distract the council and the parliaments. 
When the latter was made a cardinal Gloucester’s party 
endeavoured to deprive him of the bishopric of Winchester, 
on the alleged ground that the two offices were incompati¬ 
ble ; and, when he obtained the additional appointment of 
legate, they succeeded in persuading Henry positively to 
forbid his acceptance of that dignity. On the other hand, 
when Gloucester, as protector of the kingdom during Bed¬ 
ford’s absence in France, endeavoured to usurp powers that 
did not belong to his office, the opposite faction compelled 
him to withdraw from such pretensions, and to know his 
place as the equal, not as the superior of the rest of the 
peers. Once the council persuaded the two princes to refer 
their quarrel to the arbitration of the primate, and to agree 
to a public reconciliation ; but that, as was to be expected, 
produced but a hollow and brief peace between them ; and 
their speedily reviving enmity, as active as ever, though for 
a time more covertly indulged, gradually led to the de¬ 
thronement of the king and total destruction of their whole 
family. 

When Henry arrived at manhood, it was natural that his 
marriage should be considered an event of great import¬ 
ance, and as such it was converted into a trial of strength 
between the two parties. Gloucester wished to select for 
him the daughter of the count d’Armagnac, a princess 
nearly related to the duke of Orleans, who had lately been 
ransomed, after having been kept in captivity ever since 
the battle of Agincourt, and possessed of large estates in 
the south-west of France. But the cardinal, and the earl 
of Suffolk, the most powerful of the nobles who espoused 
his party, preferred Margaret, daughter of Bene, duke of 
Anjou and Maine, and titular king of Sicily and Jerusalem, 
though, in point of fact, he was not in possession of the 
very smallest part of any of these dominions; and Anjou 
and Maine were in the hands of the English. She was a 
princess of great beauty, and great abilities; and, as she 
was a near relation of the king of France, it was hoped 


XXII.] HENRY VI. 195 

that a marriage with her might lead to a permanent peace 
between the two countries. Suffolk was sent to the Con¬ 
tinent as plenipotentiary to negotiate it; and he consented, 
further, that Henry should restore to Rene his duchies of 
Maine and Anjou. He married the princess himself as 
Henry’s proxy at Nancy, and then conducted her to England, 
wffiere she arrived in May, 1445. 

Margaret speedily obtained entire influence over the 
feeble mind of her husband; and, strengthened by her sup¬ 
port, the cardinal proceeded to take steps for. the total 
ruin of his rival. A year or two before a great blow had 
been struck at Gloucester’s popularity by the prosecution 
of his duchess for witchcraft. He had been at all times a 
zealous encourager of learning, and a munificent patron of 
learned men; and among the objects of his favour was a 
priest, named Bolingbroke, of the highest reputation as a 
master of every branch of science then cultivated. He was 
a great astronomer; and, at the instigation of the duchess, 
he added to his studies those of astrology and necromancy. 
As, while Henry was childless, her husband’was his nearest 
heir, she persuaded Bolingbroke, and a woman, named 
Margery Jourdaine, of great celebrity as a professor of 
magic, to calculate the period of the king’s death; and it 
was not difficult for the malice of the duke’s enemies to 
found on this proved fact a charge of using unlawful means 
to effect it. The duchess and her agents were accused of 
having formed a waxen image of Henry, and then exposed 
it to a slow fire, in the belief that, as the wax melted away, 
his health would decline. They were convicted; indeed, 
the duchess herself confessed the practice of magical arts, 
though she denied the object imputed to her. Jourdaine 
was burnt as a witch, Bolingbroke was executed as a traitor, 
and the duchess was condemned to do public penance in 
the streets of London, and to be imprisoned for life. 

Emboldened by this success, his enemies now proceeded 
to attack the duke himself. His popularity among the 
citizens of London was such as to render it politic to 
choose some other scene of action; so a parliament was 
summoned to meet at Bury, in Eebruary, 1447, where he 
was accused of treason, and arrested, and a few days after¬ 
wards he was found dead in his bed. The manner of his 
death was not known, but he was universally understood 
to have been murdered by the contrivance of Suffolk and 

o 2 


A.D. 

1435— 

1461. 


A.D. 

1435- 

1401. 


196 ' HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [oil- 

the cardinal. The cardinal himself died only six weeks 
after; and Suffolk, now a duke, for a time enjoyed almost 
undivided power; but his rapid elevation had provoked 
envy, which he further exasperated by endeavouring to 
crush those who had no fault but that of having been the 
adherents or favourites of Gloucester. The cession of 
Anjou and Maine, which was ostensibly his act, though it 
had been sanctioned bv the whole council, and was not 
really injurious to the kingdom, was very unpopular. 
Henry’s imbecile character could not command respect, 
and the queen’s inclination to arbitrary measures was be¬ 
coming notorious and odious. While matters were in this 
state the enemies of the minister found a new head in 
Bichard, duke of York. He was descended from Lionel, 
duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III.; and, being 
such, he clearly, according to the strict rules of suc¬ 
cession, had a better right to the throne than the king, 
who was descended from the duke of Lancaster, the fourth 
son of that monarch; but the claims of his branch of the 
family had been unanimously passed over on the deposition 
of Bichard, and the authority of the house of Lancaster had 
been confirmed by many acts of parliament, by oaths of allegi¬ 
ance from the whole kingdom,and from the princes themselves, 
whose rights had been disregarded. York had commanded 
in Erance after the death of the duke of Bedford, displaying 
considerable skill as a governor, though unable to arrest the 
tide of French conquest. He had afterwards been more 
successful in repressing a rebellion in Ireland; and in both 
employments he had won very general esteem and good 
will by his moderation and affability. It contributed also 
greatly to his influence that his wife was the daughter of 
Neville, earl of Westmoreland, whose nephew had married 
the heiress of the earl of Warwick, and had succeeded to 
the title and vast estates of that nobleman. He now openly 
attacked the bishop of Chichester, who held the privy seal; 
and, when that prelate had been driven from office, some 
members of the commons, looking upon this as the first 
step towards victory, formally impeached Suffolk himself. 
Some of the charges brought against him were ridiculous, 
some notoriously false ; but as it seemed likely that, if he 
were brought to trial, he would be unable to escape con¬ 
demnation, his friends, in order to save him, persuaded him 
to submit to the king’s mercy, who banished him for five 


IIEXRY YI. 


197 


XXII.] 

years, hoping* that the ill will of his enemies would be 
cooled by his absence; but they were too determined on 
his destruction to allow themselves to be thus baulked of 
their prey. The vessel in which he crossed the Channel 
was waylaid; he was seized, dragged into a small boat, 
and beheaded. His murderers conveyed his bod}^ to the 
Kentish coast, left it on the shore, and sailed away undis¬ 
covered. 

These events unsettled the minds of the people, and 
disposed them to sedition and violence, and their restless 
humour was taken advantage of by an Irishman, of the 
name of Jack Cade, who pretended to be a son of sir John 
Mortimer, and collected a vast body of men in Kent, who 
committed great outrages. He defeated the first force that 
was sent against him, entered London, seized lord Say, 
the treasurer, and put him to death, till at last the citizens, 
alarmed for their property and their lives, united with 
the king’s troops, and drove him out of the capital. 
A reward was offered for his arrest. He was slain by 
the sheriff of Kent, and his head was set upon London 
bridge. 

While these events were taking place the duke of York 
was in Ireland; but he returned in the autumn, and at the 
beginning of the year, 1452, he raised a strong force, with 
which he marched towards London with the avowed inten¬ 
tion of compelling a reformation in the government. The 
duke of Somerset had been the principal minister since the 
death of Suffolk, and the duke of York impeached him in 
parliament, but did not behave with the wary caution that 
such a step required. Confiding in his power, he came un¬ 
armed into the king’s presence, and was himself made 
a prisoner; but, so great was his popularity, that Somerset 
did not venture on any act of violence towards him, but was 
contented to require him to take a fresh oath of allegiance 
to Henry, and released him. He returned to his castle at 
Wigmore, and remained quiet for some time. 

At the end of the next year, however, Henry was seized 
with an illness which temporarily reduced him to a complete 
state of fatuity; while, about the same time, Queen Mar¬ 
garet was delivered of a son, who was christened Edward. 
Both events were of great political importance. The first ren¬ 
dered it necessary to appoint a protector of the kingdom, and 
the duke of York was unanimously named to that office; while 


A.D. 

1435 — 

14G1. 


198 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. the second put an end to his hopes of succeeding peaceably 
1435 — -|- 0 the throne on Henry’s death, by providing the king with a 
male heir. He threw Somerset into prison, but forbore to 
proceed any further against him, and continued to exercise 
his authority with great moderation, till the beginning ot 
1455, when Henry suddenly recovered, declared the pro¬ 
tectorate terminated, released Somerset, and restored him to 
his office. York had some reason to think that Somerset 
and the queen were bent on his destruction; and he again 
collected an army, with which he marched a second time 
towards the capital. The king’s government, afraid of his 
reaching London, where his popularity was great, advanced 
with a small force to meet him, and occupied St. Alban’s, 
denouncing the Yorkists as traitors. York, thinking that 
there was no longer safety for him in moderation, attacked 
the town, and a fierce skirmish ensued. On the 22nd 
of May, 1455, was shed the first blood in this unhappy 
quarrel, which for years devastated England, and which 
was carried on with a degree of fierceness and cruelty on 
both sides, of which no other wars in this country afford 
any example, till it had destroyed nearly all the princes of 
the blood, and almost annihilated the ancient nobility of the 
kingdom ; for it is remarkable, that while in other wars the 
slaughter fell principally on the common soldiers, but the 
higher classes who could afford to pay ransom were spared; 
in this war the mutual animosity of the nobles against 
each other proved especially fatal to their own order; 
and orders were given on each side, to give no quarter to 
the nobility and gentry, but to spare the common people. 
The number of the slain was very small, but some of the 
principal nobles of the king’s party, including Somerset him¬ 
self, were slain. Henry fell into the hands of the duke of 
York, who treated him witli outward respect, but compelled 
him to consent to his appointment as constable of England, 
while the earl of Warwick was made governor of Calais. 
He repeated his oath of allegiance, and when, at the end of 
the year, the king’s malady returned, he was a second time 
appointed protector. 

Margaret bore this state of things with great impatience. 
She was determined to rule both king and kingdom, and the 
authority entrusted to York reduced her to a cipher. A 
second time Henry vims said to have recovered sufficiently 
to resume his authority, and she carried him on a journey to 



XXII.] HENRY VI. 199 

Coventry, where York, Warwick, and the earl of Salisbury, 
Warwick’s father, were invited to meet him. There seems 
no doubt that she intended, when she had got them in her 
power, to have put them to death; but they received timely 
notice of her intentions, and escaped; and, for the future, 
surrounded themselves with an armed force sufficient to pre¬ 
vent any similar treachery. Through the mediation of the 
primate, a reconciliation took place, which was ostensibly con¬ 
firmed by a solemn procession to St. Paul’s, in which the king, 
the queen, the duke, and the leading nobles of each party 
walked side by side, to implore the divine blessing on their 
renewed friendship. But the seeds of enmity had been 
too deeply sown to be extirpated by such a hollow pageant. 
A quarrel between the servants of the king and the earl of 
Warwick rekindled its smouldering sparks. The queen en¬ 
deavoured to seize Warwick, who fled to his government 
of Calais, but soon returned to bear his part in the war, 
which was henceforward to assume a more regular character. 

In May, 1459, Henry raised the royal standard at 
Leicester, while York and his party prepared to advance to 
Kenilworth. Prom some cause, not known, each party 
assumed the same cognizance, a rose; the badge varied only 
in colour, that of king Henry, or the Lancastrians, being a 
red, while the Yorkists were distinguished by a white rose. 
It would be tedious and unprofitable to relate the details of 
the miserable conflicts that ensued, in which victory de¬ 
clared alternately for either side, and the ranks of each army 
were disgraced by treachery and desertion. At one time the 
royalists gained such decisive advantages that York fled to 
Ireland and Warwick to Calais, and a parliament at Coventry 
cheerfully passed a bill of attainder against them both as 
traitors. At another, Henry himself was a prisoner in the 
hands of his subjects. 

Before the victory of Northampton, where the king was 
taken, the duke of York had not himself claimed the throne, 
though his partisans had constantly asserted his right to do 
so. But the violent proceedings of the parliament at Coventry 
left him scarcely any prospect of safety as a subject, and 
compelled him either to flee for his life, or to endeavour to 
obtain the supreme power. He now asserted his pretensions 
more openly, though he still made no attempt to establish 
them by force ; but contented himself with stating his claim 
to the assembled parliament. The two houses decided on a 


A.D. 

1435 — 

1461. 




200 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.i>. compromise, according to which, Henry should retain the 
1435 crown for his lifetime, but Richard should be acknowledged 
as his heir, to the exclusion of the prince of Wales. 

Margaret, however, was not inclined to submit to the ex¬ 
clusion of her son from his inheritance; the moment that 
her husband fell into the power of the opposite party she 
fled to the north, where she was joined by the nobles 
who adhered to Henry, and who speedily collected an 
army of nearly 20,000 men. York had not above 6000 
with him, for the greater part of his force was at Shrews¬ 
bury with his eldest son Edward; but he thought his 
honour concerned not to avoid a battle, and sent a formal 
challenge to Somerset and Clifford, the commanders of the 
queen’s army. The battle took place in front of the town 
of Wakefield, on the 30th of December, 1460. The Yorkists 
were utterly defeated, and York himself, with his second son, 
the earl of Rutland, and Salisbury, and many other nobles 
of the party were taken prisoners. A crown of grass was 
placed in derision on the duke’s brows, and he was instantly 
beheaded; and Clifford himself carried the bleeding trophy 
to Margaret, who disgraced her sex by the unwomanly ex¬ 
ultation with which she received it. As a rebel against the 
sovereign to whom he had repeatedly sworn allegiance, it can¬ 
not be denied that duke Richard deserved his fate; but, in 
other respects, he was a prince of singular virtue. His abili¬ 
ties were inferior to those of his son, but the moderation with 
which he pursued what he considered his just rights, the 
fairness of his conduct towards his opponents, and his 
humanity in victory, place him in marked and amiable con¬ 
trast to his savage contemporaries. 

The young Rutland was stabbed by Clifford with his own 
hand, Salisbury and the captive nobles were beheaded, and 
the Yorkist party seemed broken; but, in fact, the victory 
of Wakefield was Henry’s greatest'misfortune; since the 
atrocities which the queen and her adherents perpetrated in 
their exultation, alienated his warmest supporters. His 
army, as it marched from York to St. Alban’s, pillaged the 
country all along, its line of march, burnt the manor-houses, 
plundered the churches and abbeys, maltreating and slaying 
all who resisted, till the zeal for the royal cause which had 
previously animated the generality of the clergy and gentry 
gave way to a desire for their own preservation, and dis¬ 
posed them to welcome any change which might have a 



HENRY VI. 


201 


XXTI.] 

chance to save them from a repetition of such atrocities. 
The new duke of York, afterwards Edward IV., was pos¬ 
sessed of considerable military skill and promptitude in 
action, but was as destitute of moderation and humanity as 
his father had been conspicuous for those qualities. He de¬ 
feated a strong body of royalists under Henry’s half-brother, 
the earl ot Pembroke, and gave a terrible indication of his 
disposition by putting to death, in cold blood, his prisoners 
ot noble birth ; and (though this victory was more than 
counterbalanced by a severe defeat sustained by Warwick at 
St. Alban’s, where Henry was retaken by his own adherents, 
and Margaret again disgraced herself by retaliating the 
cruelty of her enemies) he marched at once on London, 
where the chief strength of his party had always lain, and 
openly assumed the title of king. He would not wait to 
summon a parliament, but a mob was collected on the out¬ 
skirts, to whom lord Falconbridge addressed a long speech, 
setting forth the evils which had arisen from the weakness 
of the king and the cruelty of the queen, and urging 
Edward’s superior claims to the throne. The populace 
eagerly interrupted him by greeting Edward as king, and a 
few lords and members of the commons’ house assembled at 
Earnard’s Castle, and ratified his acceptance of the title. 
On the 4th of March, 1461, he proceeded in royal state to 
St. Paul’s, and from thence to Westminster, where he 
entered the house of lords, and took his seat on the throne. 
Crossing over to the abbey, he put the crown on his own 
head, and, standing before the great altar, received the 
homage of the nobles of his party by whom he was attended. 
The next day he was proclaimed king through the city, and 
the reign of Henry was terminated. A reign so disturbed, 
first by foreign and latterly by civil wars, was not likely to 
be productive of any systematic reforms ; but the weakness 
of the monarchy co-operated with the silent effect of time 
in gradually increasing the .power of parliament; and it 
is a mark of the rising importance of the commons, that one 
of the charges against Suffolk was, that he had tampered 
with the election of members of their house; and that the only 
law of great importance passed during the period was one 
limiting the electors for the county members to such as 
possessed forty shillings a year in land. Such sum was 
equal in value to above ten times that amount of our present 
money, but the rate then fixed has remained unaltered even 


A.D. 

1435 - 

14G1. 


202 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. by the reform bill, and to this day the forty-shilling free- 
14 H h°ld ers form a very numerous and important portion of the 
constituency of the kingdom. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

EDWARD IY. 

1461— Edward IY. was but nineteen years of age when he thus 

1483 * made himself master of the kingdom. We shall hurry 
rapidly over his melancholy and uuinstructive reign, when 
the kingdom was desolated by civil war, (every where and 
always fertile of misery to a nation,) the alternations of which, 
strange as they were, were produced by causes which no one 
has been able to trace, and which, could they be discovered, 
would probably be found in some of the vilest passions which 
influence the human heart. Less than 200 years afterwards 
England became a second time the scene of civil war; but 
then, though there was much to deplore, and much to be 
ashamed of, there was also much to which the partisans of 
either side could point with satisfaction, and even with 
pride; much to which their posterity, whatever may be the 
political feelings of each individual, may refer with tempe¬ 
rate and well-founded thankfulness. Grievous as it was, 
and stained with one great and inexpiable crime, still that 
war was carried on for the most part on both sides with an 
English spirit. On the one side, the virtuous and high- 
minded, though ill-educated and misguided king, his faithful 
and chivalrous nobles who fought and fell for him, his holy 
clergy who prayed and suffered for him, form a band of 
heroes, whom the advocates of his cause may well remember 
with respect; on the other, the dauntless patriots who asserted 
their country’s liberties, and .the indomitable middle class 
who maintained them with their swords, have established for 
themselves a permanent claim on the gratitude of all who 
deserve to be the inheritors of their freedom: and, when the 
strife was over, the chief, whom it had raised to power, 
whatever judgment may be passed on his mysterious and 
inconsistent character, was at least no governor of their sub¬ 
mission to whom Englishmen had cause to feel ashamed; 
but one who, rising with his prosperity, swayed the sceptre 



XXIII.] EDWARD IT. 203 

with a wisdom and energy that, if he had owed his elevation 
to any source but his own crimes, would have entitled him 
to a high place among the rulers of mankind. 

This war has no such honourable features. On one side 
we see an imbecile king, and a queen who more than effaces 
our admiration of the intrepid resolution with which she 
braved disaster and treachery in her struggle for her hus¬ 
band’s rights, by the implacable revenge, the unwomanly 
ferocity, with which she sought to destroy all who opposed 
her, and even feasted her eyes on the remains of her fallen 
enemies ; on the other, a licentious, faithless prince, brave, 
indeed, and skilful in war, but hardened in cruelty even 
before he arrived at the age of manhood, seeking his way to 
the throne by the indiscriminate slaughter of his country¬ 
men ; and, when it was won, caring for it only as affording 
him the means for a more unchecked career of shameless 
profligacy, making even the valour and military glory of his 
countrymen a pretext for extorting from foreign princes 
treasures to be squandered in personal riot and debauchery. 

The new reign opened with an act of the most ridiculous, 
yet odious, tyranny. In those days every shop was dis¬ 
tinguished by a sign ; and one unfortunate tradesman had 
chosen the crown for his device. In a fit of loyal plea¬ 
santry he boasted that his son was heir to the crown, and 
the saying was repeated as a merry jest. But Edward’s 
hold upon the throne was too ticklish for him to relish it, 
and he actually had the unhappy shopkeeper executed as a 
traitor for holding up the kingly title to derision. 

In truth, he could not but feel that his position as king 
was very precarious. He had possession of London, and 
throughout the south of England his title was cordially 
acknowledged: but in the north Henry had still a powerful 
party, and his generals were at the head of an army of nearly 
50,000 men. The very day after the proclamation of 
Edward as king his forces marched to encounter this for¬ 
midable host; and, on the 29th of the month, he confronted 
them with still greater numbers at Towton, a village about 
eight miles from York. So obstinate was the contest that 
it was not decided till late on the second day. The 
slaughter on both sides was immense. The Lancastrians 
gave little quarter; the Yorkists none, by the express 
orders of Edward himself. At last victory declared for him ; 
and he showed how little he deserved it by beheading the 


A.D. 

1461 — 

1483 . 


204 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[_CH. 

a.d. few prisoners of noble birth, who bad been taken, in cold 
blood. Henry and Margaret fled to Scotland, and Edward 
returned to London for his coronation. In the winter he 
summoned a parliament, which revised all the acts of 
attainder that at different times had been carried against 
his family and party, and passed votes of forfeiture against 
Henry, his queen, his son, and all his adherents. 

Even yet Margaret was not inclined to abandon the con¬ 
test. She crossed over to France, where Louis XI., a prince 
of deep policy, but of no other virtue, had lately succeeded 
to the throne ; and, by promising him to restore Calais if 
her husband were re-established in his rights, she prevailed 
on that crafty monarch to send her a considerable reinforce¬ 
ment. It only encouraged her to encounter another signal 
defeat at Hexham. Her troops were cut to pieces. Those 
who escaped the sword of the enemy perished by the axe of 
the executioner ; and at last her cause seemed desperate 
even to herself. Henry fled, and sought safety in disguise; 
but after a time his retreat was discovered, and he fell into 
Warwick’s hands, who treated him with great insult, tying 
his legs, and strapping him to his horse, that he might not 
escape ; and in this condition led him in triumph through 
the streets of London to the Tower, where he was kept 
prisoner for five years. Margaret was exposed to equal indig¬ 
nity and greater danger. She was wandering with her child 
alone through the wood near the fatal field of battle, when 
she fell into the hands of robbers, who plundered her of all 
her property. While they were quarrelling over their booty 
she escaped from them, only to meet another ruffian of still 
fiercer aspect, who with his sword drawn seemed to menace 
her with instant destruction. Despair gave her courage, of 
which, indeed, she was seldom in want. She advanced 
towards the bandit with an intrepid countenance. “ Take 
this boy, my friend,” were her words: “save the son of 
thy king.” The man was so struck by awe at her demeanour, 
or by admiration at her courage, that he became her guide, 
and led her in safety to the nearest port, where she found a 
boat, and escaped to Elanders. Erom thence she reached 
her father’s court, in Lorraine, where she resided in safety 
and obscurity for some years. Those of Henry’s adherents 
who escaped the battle-field and the scaffold also fled to the 
Continent, where they lived in utter destitution. The duke 
of Exeter was actually seen by De Comines wandering bare- 



XXIII.] EDWARD IV. 205 

foot through the country, begging his bread from door to 
door. But at last most of them reached the court of the 
duke of Burgundy, where they were hospitably received, and 
where they remained till the renewal of the wars, when most 
of them returned to fall in the fatal battle of Barnet. 

Edward, if he had been possessed of common prudence 
and energy, might now have been secure on his throne; and 
his first steps were well calculated to give stability to his 
position. He rewarded his adherents, and, at the same 
time, attached them to his interests for the future by 
attainting all the chief Lancastrian nobles, confiscating their 
estates, and bestowing them on his own partisans; and, by 
his affability and courtesy to all classes, even to those not 
generally honoured w r ith a sovereign’s notice, he rendered 
himself exceedingly popular. 

But as it was not the affection of the people in general, 
but the power of one noble family which had been the prin¬ 
cipal means of raising him to the throne, the subsequent 
enmity of the same house for a while deprived him of it. 
Warwick, now the head of the Nevilles, was by far the most 
opulent and powerful noble that had ever been seen in 
England. One of his brothers was Lord Montague, a baron 
of the greatest military reputation, who had won the battle 
of Hexham ; another brother was archbishop of York, and 
chancellor of the kingdom. The first offence given to this 
influential family was caused by an act passed immediately 
after Montague’s victory, resuming several estates which of 
late years had been imprudently alienated by the crown, 
among which were some manors in the possession of one or 
other of the three brothers. But a far deeper injury was 
done to their pride by the attempt to raise up another 
family to equal or superior consideration in the kingdom. 

Being at all times of a most amorous disposition, Edward 
had fallen violently in love with lady Elizabeth Grey, the 
widow of sir John Grey, a knight of the Lancastrian party, 
and daughter of sir Bichard Woodville and his wife, the 
duchess of Bedford, the widow of the great duke. He 
married her secretly, in the spring of 1464 ; but at the end 
of the year he avowed his marriage, and caused her to be 
crowned, at Westminster, as his queen. Being a woman of 
great beauty and sense, she speedily obtained great influence 
over him. She was naturally anxious for the advancement 
of her own relations, and having always been, both by birth 


A.D. 

14G1 — 
1483. 


206 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. and by her first marriage, closely connected with the Lan- 
1401 — castrians, she had but little friendship for the Nevilles, who 
had been the chief instruments of their overthrow. The 
kings of England had constantly exerted great influence and 
even direct authority over the marriage of the young nobles 
and great heiresses of the kingdom; and now, by Edward’s 
favour, her sisters were all married to powerful lords; her 
brothers and her son by sir John Grey to opulent heiresses 
or widows ; so little care being taken to avoid provoking 
comments or ridicule that the wife selected for her youngest 
brother, John, a boy of twenty, was the old duchess of Nor¬ 
folk, who had passed her eightieth year. Warwick was 
especially disgusted, as he had solicited the hand of the 
heiress of the duke of Exeter, now married to the queen’s 
son, for his own nephew. Eresh offence was given him by 
taking away the great seal from his brother ; and his alienation 
was completed by the marriage of the king’s sister, Margaret, 
to the duke of Burgundy, in spite of his most urgent re¬ 
monstrances. He began to strengthen his party against the 
king. Many of the nobles were sufficiently inclined to join 
him, being discontented at the Woodvilles, whom they looked 
upon as of inferior birth, being ennobled by different titles, 
and invested with the highest offices of the state, and thus 
raised to an equality with themselves ; and he obtained an 
important recruit from the king’s own family, by giving the 
duke of Clarence his eldest daughter in marriage, who, as he 
had no son, was the heiress of half his vast possessions. 
Edward was greatly displeased, and vented his displeasure 
in severe reproaches, which were retorted by the earl with 
equal bitterness. 

Erom this time forth there was an end of all cordiality 
between them; the steps which Warwick took to make 
Edward feel his resentment are not very clear; but a most 
formidable insurrection, which in 1469 broke out in York¬ 
shire, the chief seat of the power of his family, was at least 
favoured, if not originally instigated by him. Its ostensible 
object was to resist the imposition of a new tax; but the 
especial hostility shown by its leaders to the family of the 
queen, whose father and brother they put to death, seems to 
show a community of interests, or at least of inclinations 
with the Nevilles scarcely to be accounted for, except by 
the fact of some previous understanding having existed 
between them. They defeated lord Pembroke in a pitched 




XXIII.] EDWARD IV. 207 

battle at Edgecote ; and immediately afterwards AVarwick 
and Clarence, who had just returned from Calais, proceeded 
towards Olney, in Northamptonshire, where Edward was at 
the time, and, though they treated him with outward re¬ 
spect, in effect made him their prisoner, and compelled him 
to accompany them to Warwick’s castle at Middleham, 
where they detained him for some time. 

This rebellion had scarcely been put down when another 
broke out in Lincolnshire, which was put down by Edward 
himself, who by some means or other had recovered his 
liberty. And to restore peace to the kingdom, he recon¬ 
ciled himself to his brother Clarence and to Warwick, con¬ 
ferring on the earl the dignity of grand justiciary of Wales, 
and agreeing to give his daughter, a child only four years 
old, to the son of lord Montague, who had been recently 
created earl of Northumberland. It was but a short-lived 
reconciliation : a second time Warwick and Clarence endea¬ 
voured to make him prisoner, and, being disappointed by his 
escape, in consequence of a timely warning which he re¬ 
ceived of their design, they crossed over to France, where, 
by the mediation of Louis, Warwick became reconciled to 
queen Margaret, agreed to do his utmost to restore Henry 
to his throne, and proposed to give his daughter Anne in 
marriage to the young prince Edward, if he should re-establish 
him on the throne of his fathers. 

The king was alarmed, as he well might be, at the news 
of this strange reconciliation; and he sought to lessen its 
effect as much as possible by detaching Clarence from 
the earl; urging upon him, by his emissaries, the folly of 
conspiring to depress his own family in order to restore its 
mortal enemies to power; and he so worked on the fickle 
mind of the prince that he agreed to join him again on the 
first favourable opportunity after his return to England. 
Satisfied with this promise, Edward gave himself no further 
trouble about Warwick’s enmity, but plunged more reck¬ 
lessly than ever into his favourite pleasures, exciting by his 
profligacy the disgust of his people, and the contempt of 
the nobles, who were urgent in their invitations to Warwick 
to deliver them from the ignominious rule of this modern 
Sardanapalus. 

Warwick was prepared to make the most effectual reply 
to their call. His friends posted all over London a sort of 
proclamation denouncing, not the king himself, but the 

» .1 % 

* 


A.D. 

14(il — 
1483. 






A.D. 

1461- 

1463. 


208 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [oH. 

favourites who had obtained unworthy possession of the 
royal ear; and soon afterwards he embarked for England, 
and his partisans began to assemble in the north. Edward, 
roused from his inactivity by the news, hastened towards 
the scene of danger; but when he heard that Warwick had 
landed and proclaimed Henry king, and that Montague, 
whom he believed to be attached to himself, was preparing 
to join his brother, he fled, and with difficulty reached 
Lynn, in Norfolk, where he embarked on board a small 
vessel ready to sail for Elanders; and so great had been his 
haste that neither he nor his attendants had any change of 
clothes or any money, and he was compelled to leave his 
cloak, lined with sable, in the captain’s hands to pay for his 
passage. 

It was the middle of September when AYarwick landed at 
Plymouth ; and, within eleven days, Edward had been forced 
to abandon his kingdom without striking a blow. He had 
scarcely crossed the Channel when his queen was delivered 
of a son, born October the 16th, 1470, and known in history as 
Edward V. On almost the same day Warwick and Clarence 
entered the capital in triumph, released Henry from his 
captivity in the Tower, and conducted him to St. Paul’s 
with the crown upon his head. A parliament was sum¬ 
moned which passed a bill of attainder against Edward, and, 
as a natural consequence of such attainder, declared the 
duke of Clarence the heir of the late duke of York, and of 
Henry in default of his natural issue. 

The news of this revolution was received by Louis of 
Erance with open exultation, by Charles of Burgundy with 
mingled and doubtful feelings. His court had long been the 
refuge of the Lancastrian nobles; some of them were high 
in his councils and confidence, and he himself was nearly 
related to Henry. On the other hand, Edward was his 
brother-in-law; and, what was more important in his eyes, 
a sworn enemy to Louis. Unable to foresee the end of 
these strange events, he temporized with both parties: 
sending He Cotniues to Calais to open negotiations with 
Warwick, and at the same time supplying Edward with 
money, and conniving at his hiring ships and transports in 
the Flemish ports. 

As soon as the severity of the winter was over Edward 
prepared to cross the Channel to recover his kingdom, or 
die in the attempt. He had lost it in a fortnight; he now 


r 





XX1TI.] EDWARD IV. 209 

regained it in a month. On the 14th of March, 1471, he 
landed at Bavenspur, the same place where Henry IY. had dis¬ 
embarked when he came to dethrone Bichard. * He had with 
him lord Hastings and about 500 men ; and he was soon 
joined by his youngest brother, Bichard, duke of Gloucester, 
who was beginning to give promise of great abilities of 
every kind, with about 100 men more. So slowly did rein¬ 
forcements come in that he found it expedient to proclaim 
that he had abandoned all claim to the throne, and only 
sought to recover his inheritance as duke of York; he wore 
in his bonnet an ostrich feather, the device of Henry’s son, 
prince Edward, and at York abjured upon oath all preten¬ 
sions to the crown. Without a moment’s delay he pro¬ 
ceeded southward towards the capital; moving so rapidly 
that Montague, who held Pomfret, could not collect his 
forces in time to attack him ; and meeting with no resist¬ 
ance, because the best of Warwick’s troops had been sta¬ 
tioned on the southern and south-eastern coasts to intercept 
him, and had not heard of his landing. 

Warwick himself had probably more courage than military 
skill; 'for, even when Edward reached Coventry, he had 
but 3000 men with him, and might easily have been crushed 
by Warwick’s superior forces; but his supineness encou¬ 
raged reinforcements to join Edward, who now boldly 
reassumed the title of king, and challenged Warwick to 
single combat. When that was declined, he offered him 
pardon for his revolt, and promised to restore him to his 
favour, if he would return to his duty; but his advances 
were rejected, in spite of Clarence’s entreaties, who, when 
he could make no impression on his father-in-law, quitted 
his standard, and joined his brother, with 4000 men. 
Edward, now at the head of 10,000 men, marched to 
London, of which Warwick’s brother, the archbishop of York, 
had been left governor, with 6000 men; but he was always 
of a timorous and vacillating disposition, and, finding that 
the citizens were inclined to Edward’s party, he resolved 
to make his own peace with him, and not only submitted 
himself, but delivered Henry into his hands. On the 
11th of April Edward entered London; but, hearing that 
AVhrwick was at last marching to attack him, he quitted 
the capital on the 13th, and advanced as far as Barnet. 
His army probably amounted to almost 10,000 men, and 
was considerably outnumbered by the enemy, who had 

. p 


A.D. 

1461— 

1483. 





210 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. also a great superiority in artillery. His brother Richard, 
1401 — though only nineteen, commanded his right wing, lord 
,483, Hastings his left, and he himself took his post in the centre. 
At first the battle went so much against him, Hastings 
being outflanked, and utterly routed, that the news reached 
London that he was completely defeated; but the right 
and the centre were maintaining a more equal contest, and 
indeed had gaiued some advantage, when an accident gave 
him a complete victory. Edward’s device was the sun, 
and that of the earl of Oxford, one of the chief Lancastrian 
commanders, was a star, with streaming rays. Oxford’s 
men, returning from the pursuit of Hastings, were mis¬ 
taken by their comrades for Edward’s troops, and received 
with a volley of arrows. They, in return, attacked their 
assailants, taking it for granted that they were enemies. 
The whole armv was thrown into irremediable confusion, 
of which Edward and Richard took prompt and skilful 
advantage. The Lancastrians were wholly defeated, and 
Warwick and Montague slain. 

The same day that all the hopes of her party perished 
with Warwick, queen Margaret landed at Weymouth, and 
began to raise the loyal yeomen of the west country to 
strike one more blow for her husband’s cause. They met at 
Exeter, in formidable numbers; and, marching towards 
London, arrived at Wells. There, hearing that Edward was 
barring their road at Abingdon, they turned aside, and 
proceeded towards Gloucester, with the intention of cross¬ 
ing the Severn at that point, then forming a union with 
their friends in Cheshire and Lancashire, and descending 
on the metropolis from that side of the country. But they 
were refused admission into Gloucester, and, not choosing 
to waste time in attacking so strong a town, they pressed 
onwards to the bridge at Tewkesbury. By this time 
Edward, who had pursued them with great vigour ever 
since he heard of their march from Wells, had almost over¬ 
taken them ; so it was decided not to attempt to cross the 
river, but to give him battle on its left bank. Edward 
perceived their intention with joy. Courage was his only 
virtue, military skill his only talent, and in a pitched battle 
he had never been defeated. Neither army was very large, 
but the Yorkists far outnumbered the Lancastrians. So¬ 
merset commanded for Margaret, having under his care 
prince Edward, a youth of seventeen. Richard led the 



EDWARD IV. 


211 


XXIII.] 

attack that was to fix the crown on his brother’s brows; 
and his premature skill, united with the most impetuous 
valour, soon decided the contest. Somerset did all that a 
gallant leader could do; but lord Wenlock, his second in 
command, was either a coward, or a traitor, and refused 
to support him. Somerset, burning with indignation, clove 
his skull with his battle-axe; but this act of fury only 
added to the confusion. After a short struggle victory 
declared for the Yorkists. Prince Edward fell fighting, 
as became the grandson of the hero of Agincourt. Somerset, 
and those chiefs who escaped the slaughter of the field of 
battle, took refuge in the church as a sanctuary; but no 
sanctuary could afford protection against the unscrupulous 
and merciless Edward. They were dragged forth, and put 
to death in the market-place at Tewkesbury. Margaret 
had also taken refuge in a religious house ; but her retreat 
was discovered, and she was sent to the Tower, where her 
husband had been confined ever since his surrender to Edward. 

Edward had now no enemy left alive but Henry, if, 
indeed, that gentle prince could be called an enemy to 
any one. He arrived in London, seventeen days after his 
victory, on the 21st of May; and the next morning the 
citizens were informed that Henry was dead. The an¬ 
nouncement declared that in his weak state of health the 
news of the utter ruin of his party had proved too much 
for him, and that he had died of a broken heart; but the 
report which obtained more general belief told that he had 
been murdered, some said by the advice, others by the 
dagger of the duke of Gloucester. In succeeding years it 
was the fashion to blacken Eichard’s memory by every 
possible imputation; but Edward was too revengeful and 
too pitiless to need a prompter to rid himself of one, from 
whose partisans he had lately experienced such determined 
hostility, which any favourable opportunity was likely to 
rekindle. 

This last victory was final. Lord Pembroke, who had 
an army on foot in Wales, disbanded it, and fled with his 
nephew, the earl of Eichmond, afterwards Henry VII., to 
Brittany. The son of lord Ealconbridge, who had a formid¬ 
able force both by sea and land under his command, after 
a vain attempt to make himself master of London, sur¬ 
rendered, on promise of pardon and favour; but when he 

p 2 


A.D. 

1461 — 
1483. 







A.D. 

1401 — 
1483. 


1477. 


212 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

had dismissed his troops, and given np his vessels, the 
faithless king put him to death. 

In thus establishing himself upon the throne, if Edward 
had displayed great treachery and cruelty, he had also ex¬ 
hibited great courage, energy, and military ability. The 
remaining years of his reign were neither happy nor 
honourable. Wholly abandoned to profligate pleasures, he 
entrusted most of liis affairs to his brother Richard, who 
was daily giving proofs of great talents for government; 
but, at the same time, of a grasping, ambitious, and ferocious 
temper. George, the duke of Clarence, his elder brother, 
was equally covetous and ambitious, but was not endued 
with the same vigour or ability; and the court was dis¬ 
tracted with their dissensions. Clarence had married War¬ 
wick’s eldest daughter, Isabel; and Richard now determined 
to marry the younger daughter, Anne, who had been 
betrothed to prince Edward, who fell at Tewkesbury. 
Clarence, eager to engross the w r hole of Warwick’s vast 
inheritance, endeavoured to prevent tins match, and dis¬ 
guised his sister-in-law as a cookmaid to conceal her from 
Gloucester, and, when she was discovered, declared furiously 
that though his brother might have the wife, he should 
never have her inheritance. The quarrel between them was 
terminated, to outward appearance, by an act of parliament, 
dividing the disputed property fairly between the sisters; 
but the ill will thus sown between the brothers was per¬ 
manent, and after a few years led to Clarence’s destruction. 
That unfortunate prince had soon another and more rea¬ 
sonable cause of irritation. His wife died about the same 
time that Charles of Burgundy fell at Nancy, leaving a 
daughter, Mary, the sole heiress of his important dominions. 
Clarence became ambitious of marrying her; and his suit 
was favoured by his sister Margaret, Charles’s widow. 
But the queen’s brother, earl Rivers, was also a suitor for 
her hand ; and Edward, who was always jealous of his 
brother, and had never forgotten that he had once been 
declared Henry’s heir to the exclusion of himself, opposed 
his pretensions, and Clarence made no secret of his dis¬ 
content. The queen and her family inflamed their mutual 
exasperation; and at last, on the most trivial pretences, 
Edward himself impeached Clarence of treason before his 
council, obtained his condemnation, and had him put to 




XXIII.] EDWARD IV. 213 

death in the Tower, where, according to the universal belief, 
he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. 

The darling passion of Charles the Bold had been hostility 
to Louis; and, soon after the termination of the civil war, 
he had engaged Edward to enter into his views, and to 
reassert the claim of the Plantagenets to the crown of 
Erance. This claim was always popular in England, and 
the parliament immediately voted him a large supply; but 
as it was not sufficient for bis warlike preparations, and 
for his pleasures, he also extorted large sums from the 
wealthiest of his subjects as gifts, which he called bene¬ 
volences ; and, having thus raised an army of nearly 
17,000 men, he passed over to Calais, and entered Erance. 
Louis XI. never considered what was the most honourable, 
but only what was the most advantageous line of action. To 
his schemes of domestic policy peace was of paramount 
importance, and peace he was determined to preserve. 
He was aware of Edward’s military reputation; but he 
could equally appreciate his weak and proiligate character; 
and he determined that it would be cheaper and easier to 
buy him off than to fight him. Money was with him as 
favourite and as efficacious an agent as ever it had been 
in the hands of Philip of Macedon; and he never employed 
it more lavishly than on this occasion. He scattered large 
bribes profusely among Edward’s courtiers and ministers; 
and, when he had gained them over, he opened negotiations 
with the king himself. Eor a present payment of 75,000 
•crowns, and an annuity of 50,000, Edward agreed to lead 
back his army to England, and to give his daughter to 
Louis’s eldest son. Eor 50,000 crowns more he agreed 
to release queen Margaret, who had been now for five 
years his prisoner, and who gladly renounced all her claims 
on England to be allowed to retire to Erance, where she 
died in 1482. When the terms of this agreement had been 
settled, equally discreditable to both monarchs, except in 
respect of Louis’s exertions for Margaret’s freedom, a bridge 
was erected across the Somme, at Pecquigny, with a strong 
barrier in the middle, lest either monarch should plot the 
assassination of the other, so complimentary, and probably 
so just was their mutual appreciation of the other’s good 
faith. The two kings met on the bridge, shook hands with 
one another through the grating, and swore to observe their 
engagements. 


A.D. 

1461— 

1483. 








214 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. It was not strange that the army and the nation at large 
ij'>a were dissatisfied with such an ignominious treaty; and so 
general was the feeling of discontent, that Edward did not 
venture to demand further supplies from his parliament, but 
levied heavy sums from the clergy, as less able to resist him ; 
and engaged largely in commerce on his own account; send¬ 
ing merchant vessels laden with the staple commodities of the 
kingdom, tin, wool, and cloth, to the Mediterranean, where 
they found a ready market, and the sums thus procured 
rendered him in some degree independent of his people. 

The king of France, though not inclined to make war 
himself, had no objection that others should do so for his 
objects. The clause in the treaty of Pecquigny, according 
to which the dauphin was to marry the princess Elizabeth, 
he probably never intended to fulfil; and, to prevent Edward 
from resenting his breach of faith, he resolved to find him 
employment nearer home ; and with this view instigated 
James of Scotland to declare war against him. But Scot¬ 
land was too much agitated by factions, which divided even 
the royal family, to be capable of vigorous action. The duke 
of Gloucester at once marched to the borders, and took Ber¬ 
wick ; and peace was made, leaving that important fortress 
in the hands of the English. 

Louis’s machinations, however, had not been secret; and 
Edward meditated revenge. But his dissolute life, which had 
long since destroyed the personal beauty, for which, in his 
youth, he was celebrated throughout Europe, had now also 
ruined his constitution. An apparently slight illness proved 
fatal to him, and he died on the 9th of April, 1483, having 
reigned nearly twenty-one years; leaving two sons, Edward, 
prince of Wales, a boy of about thirteen, and Bichard, duke of 
York, about four years younger; and a character stained by 
almost every vice, and redeemed by as little virtue as can well 
be found in one possessed of undoubted ability. 

In such a reign of terror it could hardly be expected that 
the political or social condition of the people would receive 
any great improvement. And Hallam accordingly calls it 
the first reign since the granting of Magna Charta, during 
which no statute was passed for the redress of grievances, 
or for the maintenance of the subjects’ liberty. Yet even 
in this miserable period, one great invention, productive 
above all others of subsequent advancement and happiness 
to the nation, was introduced into the kingdom. Within 


EDWARD V. AND RICHARD III. 


215 


XXIV.] 

three or four years of the battle of Tewkesbury, William a.d. 
Caxton erected at Westminster the first printing press used ~~ 
in England. It would exceed our limits to enter into the 148,i * 
origin of this, the most useful discovery of human science. 

It is sufficient here to remind the reader, that, fertile as it has 
been of blessings to Europe, its greatest and happiest fruits 
have been reserved for our own island. In other nations it 
has revived literature: in Germany as well as here it has 
reformed religion. In England alone, the only home of a 
free press, it has established perfect independence of thought, 
and complete political and social liberty. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

EDWARD V. AND RICHARD III. 

The events of the next two years and a half are among the 1483- 
most obscure periods of English history. The real causes of 14 85. 
them are almost always unintelligible ; the ostensible pretexts 
often unknown, the very facts themselves sometimes uncertain. 

Part of this perplexity originates in the dark and crooked 
motives of the actors themselves; part in the deliberate 
falsification of history practised by the writers of the time of 
Henry VII., who, as their patron had no possible title to 
the crown by his own descent, or his own merits, sought to 
make out something that might resemble one by blackening 
the character, and exaggerating, if they did not invent, the 
crimes of his predecessor. 

At the accession of the young Edward V., the leading nobles 
were divided into two parties : one consisting of the relatives 
of the queen-mother, of whom her brother, earl Rivers, the 
marquis of Dorset, and lord Grey, her sons by her first 
marriage, were the chief; the other consisting of those 
nobles, who despised the Woodvilles as upstarts, and envied 
and hated them for the power which they had engrossed 
during the last reign. The leaders of this party were the 
duke of Buckingham, himself descended from the youngest 
son of Edward III.; Lord Stanley, whose wife was the 
dowager countess of Richmond; and Lord Hastings, one of 
the late king’s most trusted councillors, who held the govern- 






216 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



a.p. ment of Calais, the most important military command in 

lla- - kingdom. 

14a °' At the death of Edward IV., the young king with his 
uncle, earl Bivers, to whom his father had especially com¬ 
mitted the care of his education, was on the borders of 
AYales, at Ludlow; while the duke of Gloucester, his uncle, 
was in Scotland. On the news of his brother’s death, 
Gloucester began to travel towards the south. At York he 
caused all the nobles of that district to swear allegiance to 
Edward, himself set the example of taking the oath; and 
then proceeded to Northampton to meet him. In the mean 
time the queen, who was in London, had written to Bivers 
to bring her son to the capital for his coronation ; and he 
set out with a gallant retinue of 2000 horsemen. The queen 
would have wished him to be attended by a more formidable 
escort, sufficient to preserve all the power of the kingdom 
to her own relations, had she not been deterred from enforc¬ 
ing her wish by the energetic remonstrance of Hastings and 
the other nobles. She, however, acquiesced with a good 
grace. But lord Bivers and lord Grey determined if possible 
to keep the young king in their own power, sought to pre¬ 
vent his meeting his uncle, and sent him forward to Stony 
Stratford, while they themselves repaired to Northampton to 
receive the duke. Bichard was here met by Buckingham 
also; and after a long consultation with him and the other 
nobles of his train, he decided on arresting Bivers and Grey, 
and sending them under a guard to Pontefract; while he him¬ 
self went forward to meet and do homage to his young 
nephew. 

On the 4th of May, the day which had originally been 
fixed for his coronation, Edward entered London, preceded 
by Gloucester, who rode before him with his head bare, and 
was met by the lord mayor and the principal citizens, and 
conducted in state to the bishop’s palace at St. Paul’s. The 
queen, alarmed at the arrest of her kinsmen, had, with her 
younger son, taken sanctuary at Westminster ; but as yet 
she seemed to have no further cause for alarm. The great 
council named Bichard protector of the kingdom (and it 
was plain that no one else could have an equal claim to the 
office), assigned the young king the Tower for his residence, 
and fixed the 22nd of June for his coronation. 

But, in spite of his high office, Gloucester was not at 
ease: according to all precedent the coronation of the 



















XXIV.] EDWARD V. AND RICHARD III. 217 

young king would terminate his protectorate. Edward, a.d 
under the natural influence of his mother, would probably 148 ;] 
release his uncles, and Gloucester had already made them 14, '° 
his irreconcilable enemies; and it, perhaps, had some influ¬ 
ence on his mind that the two last dukes of Gloucester, 
though both uncles of the reigning sovereign, had been put 
to death through the jealousy of the nobles. He deter¬ 
mined that he would not become a similar victim. "What 
his cause of displeasure against Hastings was it is impos¬ 
sible to ascertain with certainty; it seems probable that he 
found that that lord (though, from jealousy of the Wood- 
villes, he would willingly have co-operated with him against 
them while they were in the ascendant), now that they 
were in confinement, recollected his old obligations to 
Edward IV., and sought to form a party among the friends 
of his children, which would be likely to counteract Eichard’s 
views. Whatever the protector’s motive may have been, 
his deed in this instance is certain. On the 10th of June 
he wrote letters to York, complaining that the queen was 
planning to destroy himself and Buckingham ; and, on the 
13th, he caused Hastings to be seized, while attending the 
council, and instantly beheaded on the green by the Tower 
chapel; justifying the act by the assertion that he had that 
very morning ascertained that Hastings had prepared the 
very same fate for himself. 

He connected him with a singular accomplice. Among 
the late king’s numerous mistresses was a woman of the 
name of Jane Shore, the wife of a London merchant; of 
extreme beauty, and of a gentleness and sweetness of tem¬ 
per that won for her the indulgence of many, even among 
those who most disapproved of the criminality of her inter¬ 
course with Edward ; especially as she was known to have 
constantly exerted her influence to soften his natural cruelty, 
and to dispose him to acts of humanity and mercy. Bichard 
now accused her of being privy to Hastings’s conspiracy ; 
but feeling, perhaps, that it would be difficult to prove it, 
he did not press that charge, but caused her to be pro¬ 
ceeded against in the ecclesiastical courts for incontinence. 

Her goods were confiscated ; and she was condemned to do 
penance, walking barefoot through the streets with a taper 
in her hand, as a public spectacle. We can hardly attribute 
her punishment to any indignation on the part of Bichard 
at her vicious life ; but may probably suppose his object to 




A.D. 

1483- 

1485. 


218 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH- 

have been, by thus directing general attention to Edward’s 
dissolute life, to prepare the minds of the people for a 
fresh attack upon his memory, which should involve the 
right of his children to their inheritance. 

Eor as he had now determined to seize the throne, he 
began rapidly to remove every obstacle from his path ; and 
he had the address to procure the unanimous consent of the 
council to most of his measures. The young king was in 
his power; but his brother, the duke of York, was with his 
mother in the sanctuary at West minster : it was dangerous 
to leave him at large, lest, on the deposition of his brother, 
the adherents of his family should rally round him as their 
head ; so Richard induced the archbishop of Canterbury to 
beg the queen to suffer the young prince to join his brother, 
since the king grieved at being alone without his playmate. 
Elizabeth, wuth many tears, consented to part with him, 
and he was taken to the Tower. The next victim was 
Morton, bishop of Ely, a bold and able man, attached to 
the queen’s party, and inclined to oppose the protector’s 
designs, which were becoming sufficiently apparent; he was 
arrested, and sent down to Brecon, to the custody of 
Buckingham, who was constable of that castle. Rivers and 
Grey were still in confinement at Pontefract; but, on the 
23rd of June, only ten days after the death of Hastings, so 
rapidly had the events recounted above succeeded each 
other, Ratcliffe, one of the boldest of Richard’s friends, 
arrived there with an armed force; and, announcing that 
the prisoners had been convicted of treason, hurried them to 
instant execution. 

All those whose opposition there was most reason to 
dread being thus removed, Richard proceeded openly to 
attack his nephew’s right to the throne; founding his 
objection on the allegation that, before their father’s mar¬ 
riage to the queen, he had been contracted to Eleanor Butler, 
a daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury : that therefore Eliza¬ 
beth had never been his lawful wife, and that her children 
were illegitimate, and incapable of succeeding to the throne; 
that lady Eleanor Butler had been the king’s mistress was 
notorious, but it was equally so that no one had ever heard 
of this pre-contract; and Richard himself had ignored it by 
taking the oath of allegiance to his nephew ; but he now 
employed his partisans to assert it in every direction. Hr. 
Shaw alleged it in a sermon at Paul’s Cross, Bucking- 



XXIV.] EDWARD V. AND RICHARD III. 219 

ham dilated on it to the common council, and the next day 
headed a deputation of the lord mayor and aldermen, accom¬ 
panied by many nobles and leading men of the house of 
commons, to entreat Bichard to take upon himself the sove¬ 
reign power, which his nephew, by reason of his illegitimate 
birth, was incapable of exercising. He protested, in reply, 
that he had no wish for such promotion ; but presently 
allowed himself to be persuaded to consent to what Buck¬ 
ingham assured him was the irresistible determination of 
the people; and the next day, being the 26th of June, he 
proceeded in state to Westminster, where he made a speech 
to the assembled people as king ; and the reign of Edward V. 
was terminated in little more than two months after his 
accession. 

Bichard was thirty years of age when he thus arrived at 
the summit of his ambition. The malicious fables of later 
days insisted so copiously on his deformity, and even on the 
preternatural monstrosities which, as they alleged, gave 
omen of the blackness of his heart, (for, if they were to be 
believed, he was not only humpbacked, with his right arm 
palsied from his birth, but he was actually born with the 
hair and teeth of a full-grown man,) that it may seem not out 
of place to say, that though distinguished neither by the sta¬ 
ture nor by the beauty of feature of his eldest brother, he 
was, nevertheless, possessed of a not unattractive coun¬ 
tenance, and of great bodily vigour and activity, though 
with high and somewhat uneven shoulders. 

Ten days after his assumption of the throne he celebrated 
his coronation with great splendour; and the short interval 
that elapsed before that ceremony he employed in setting 
an example of those virtues which make sovereigns de¬ 
servedly popular. He sat in the Court of King’s Bench, 
examining personally into the just administration of the laws ; 
behaved with courtesy and affability to all men, and issued 
a proclamation containing an amnesty for all offences pre¬ 
viously committed by word or deed against himself. He 
then made a progress through the northern counties, and 
was crowned a second time in York; and, while thus occu¬ 
pied, he received from the foreign princes, to whom he had 
sent heralds to notify his accession, a recognition of his 
authority, and from Eerdinand and Isabella of Spain a 
formal embassy, urging him to make war upon France, and 
promising him the aid of Spain in recovering the possessions 


A.D. 

1483— 

1485. 






220 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. in that country which his predecessors had enjoyed. He 
a ^ so mac ^ e P eace with James III. of Scotland, and on all 
occasions exhibited such liberal and enlarged views of 
domestic and foreign policy, as, if he had been a lawful 
sovereign, would have been calculated to render his reign 
glorious as well as prosperous. 

But an usurped authority provokes resistance, and makes 
the usurper suspicious. Bichard soon began to hear rumours 
of conspiracies; of meetings in the south and west of the 
kingdom to release the young princes, and to restore the 
elder to the throne; and it was even said that Buckingham, 
who had been the chief agent in his usurpation, and whom 
he had rewarded with vast estates and the most honourable 
offices, had repented of the part which he had acted, and was 
eager to make amends to his rightful king by effecting his 
restoration. To put an end to the interest thus shown in 
the welfare of his nephews, Hi chard caused a report to be 
spread that they were dead. ITow or when they had died 
was kept secret. In the next reign, the truth of the state¬ 
ment was doubted; and those doubts have been occasionally 
revived during the last century, and supported by such 
plausible arguments, that the fact can perhaps hardly be 
treated as absolutely certain; but the general belief was 
that, while at Warwick, he had despatched sir James Tyrrel 
to London with orders to put them to death, and that he 
and his servants had smothered them as they lay asleep in 
the Tower, and buried them secretly in that building. 

But whether they were really dead or not, he deceived him¬ 
self when he fancied that such a statement would put down 
all opposition to his own authority. It only made it the 
more formidable; first, by the general grief and indigna¬ 
tion which it excited, and, secondly, by raising up another 
competitor for the throne, who, as being of mature age, 
was naturally a more dangerous rival than a child could be, 
and who also * united the whole Lancastrian party, which 
was not yet extinct, in support of his cause. Henry V.’s 
widow, Catharine of France, had married sir Owen Tudor, 
a Welsh gentleman, and had had a son by him, whom the 
affection of his half-brother, Henry VI., raised to the 
dignity of earl of Eichmond. His son Henry, the present 
earl, was known to be a man of considerable abilities, and 
was also connected with lord Stanley, who had married his 
mother. It is evident that this descent constituted no 



XXIV.] EDWARD Y. AXD RICHARD III. 221 

relationship whatever to the house of Lancaster; but the 
earl was connected in another way with John of Gaunt, 
as being, through his mother, the grandson of the earl of 
Somerset, the son of John, by Catharine Swynford, legi¬ 
timated by act of parliament on the duke’s marriage with 
that lady, but by the same act barred for ever from all 
claim to the throne. This relationship, though real, was 
not more legally available than the other; but in the ab¬ 
sence of any one else to set up with any probability of 
success, Bichard’s enemies agreed to consider the two 
defective titles as equivalent to one good one, and owned 
Henry as the head of the house of Lancaster; and bishop 
Morton, who was in Buckingham’s custody at Brecon, 
proposed to that duke that he should be placed on the 
throne, provided he would marry the princess Elizabeth, 
the daughter of Edward IV., and, if her brothers were 
really dead, his sole remaining heir. It is strange that 
Buckingham should have agreed to this scheme so readily; 
for his own claim, as a genuine descendant of Edward III., 
was incomparably better than that of Henry, and he had 
certainly at one time thought of asserting it. However, he 
entered cordially into Morton’s proposal. The queen 
dowager agreed to it (a strong proof that she believed in 
the death of her sons) ; and the consent of Henry himself 
could never have been doubtful. He himself was in Brit¬ 
tany ; and the precipitation of his friends marred their plan 
for a time. He sailed from St. Malo, but the weather was 
so rough that he was unable to land. Before the news of 
his failure reached the conspirators in England, they had 
proclaimed him king in many of the southern and western 
counties; and Buckingham had formally raised his standard 
at the head of a small force in Brecon. 

On the first news of this rising Bichard instantly col¬ 
lected an army at Leicester. Buckingham also marched 
in that direction, expecting to be joined by large reinforce¬ 
ments on his way; but the same stormy weather, that 
prevented Henry’s arrival, impeded his progress. When 
he reached the Severn he found that great river so swollen, 
and the country around so flooded, that he could not ad¬ 
vance. His followers, chiefly drawn from the principality, 
became impatient of the delay, and deserted him in great 
numbers; and at last he was forced to abandon all thought 
of proceeding, and sought concealment among his own 


A.D. 

1483— 
1485. 





222 * HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dl. 

a.d. dependents. Richard offered a large reward for his dis- 
148:i — covery, and he was betrayed, conveyed to Salisbury, and 
’ executed. Before he was put to death he made a full con¬ 
fession of the objects of the conspiracy, and of the names 
of the conspirators, most of whom escaped to Brittany. 
Henry himself was off* Plymouth, still hoping to effect a 
landing in the west, when he heard of his fate, on which 
be also retreated to the same country, and began to prepare 
for a better organized renewal of his expedition. 

Bichard, encouraged, no doubt, by the failure of this 
attempt of his enemies, after taking the necessary steps 
to establish himself on his throne by procuring a recogni¬ 
tion of his title from parliament, applied himself to the 
exercise of his authority in a manner which even his greatest 
detractors could not but acknowledge to be for the solid 
advantage, as well as for the honour of the nation. It 
seems wonderful how, in the short period of tranquillity 
that he was permitted to enjoy, he could find time for the 
consideration of the different matters to which he devoted 
his attention. He passed many laws, having for their 
object the ease and comfort of the common people, espe¬ 
cially one forbidding the future exaction of benevolences, 
and sought to repress the power of the nobles, oppressive 
to the multitude beneath them, and, as he himself had 
already experienced, often dangerous to the sovereign, by 
regulations calculated to diminish the number of retainers 
which they kept about them, and prohibiting them from 
giving liveries and badges to any but their actual servants. 
He bestowed also liberal and discerning patronage on the 
* arts, especially on that of architecture, encouraged com¬ 
merce and navigation, though very fond of the chase. He 
disforested the large forest of Whychwood, in Oxfordshire, 
which Edward IV. had enclosed, and made extensive grants 
to many persons whose property had been injured in the 
late civil wars. In one respect he showed a magnanimity 
rare in that age, restoring the property of their husbands, 
or granting pensions to the widows of many even of those 
who had been especially opposed to himself: for instance, 
to lady Hastings and lady Rivers. His enemies after his 
death imputed these acts of wisdom and generosity to a 
dark and crooked policy; but it is fairer to attribute them 
to the natural impulses of a mind wise, energetic, and 
originally just and generous, though sadly warped at times 


EDWARD Y. AND RICHARD III. 


XXIV.] 


OOQ 


by ambition, and led by that evil spirit to the commission 
of crimes alike unpardonable and unprofitable. He also 
made peace with Scotland, and agreed to give his niece, the 
daughter of the duke of Suffolk, to the eldest son of king 
James; and at the same time he declared her brother, 
the earl of Lincoln, his heir, in default of his own male 
issue. 

"While thus beneficently employed, however, he did not 
overlook the preparations making against him on the Con¬ 
tinent, of which he had accurate information. As he 
apprehended that his chief danger from Henry lay in his 
proposed marriage with the princess Elizabeth, his first 
aim was to prevent that connexion ; and with this view he 
made overtures to the queen dowager, offering her a join¬ 
ture for herself, and a portion for each of her daughters, 
and pledging his oath for their safety, if she would quit 
the sanctuary. Accordingly, she came to court, where 
she was received with great honour; and Bichard would 
probably have obtained the princess for his own son Edward, 
had not that young prince died suddenly within a month 
of his reconciliation with her mother. Amid his grief, 
which was most severe, the king did not forget his political 
designs. His own wife, Anne, daughter of Warwick, was 
fast sinking into the grave; and he conceived the idea of 
becoming the husband of Elizabeth himself. Nor was the 
young princess averse to the proposal; but his most trusted 
councillors remonstrated so strongly against a connexion of 
so incestuous a character, that he, though very reluctantly, 
abandoned the idea. 

In the mean time he had opened negotiations with the 
duke of Brittany, in the hope of getting Henry and his 
adherents delivered into his hands ; but they, having timely 
warning of their danger, escaped into France, where they 
found the new king, Charles VIII., more able to aid them 
effectually than the duke could have been. In the summer 
of 1485, Bichard heard that his rival was preparing to 
cross the Channel, at the head of 3000 men, whom he had 
raised in Normandy; and, at the same time, he received 
certain news that he would be supported by a powerful 
party in England. Especially he was warned to distrust 
lord Stanley; that nobleman had hitherto been his staunch 
adherent; but he had married the countess of Bichmond, 
Henry’s mother, and was more than suspected of being 


A.D. 

1483— 
1485. 






A.D. 

1483- 

1485. 


224 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

privy to the plans of her son. His influence was so great 
in Cheshire and Lancashire, counties which still looked up 
to his representations with affection and respect, and the 
reinforcements which he alone could bring from those dis¬ 
tricts were so important to his cause, that Richard was 
forced to allow him to quit the court to levy troops among 
his retainers, but detained his son, lord Strange, as a hostage, 
and Stanley could have no doubt that the young man’s life 
depended on his own fidelity. 

Richard fixed his head-quarters at Nottingham; both be¬ 
cause he was especially sure of the attachment of the inha¬ 
bitants of that and the adjacent districts, and because, from 
its central situation, it would enable him to meet the ex- 
pected invader promptly, wherever he might land- He was 
not long left in suspense. On the 7th of August, Richmond 
landed at Milford, and marched through North Wales, hop¬ 
ing (as through his grandfather Tudor he claimed his 
descent from the ancient princes of the country) that the 
idea of supporting a native claimant of the throne would lead 
the Welsh to join his standard. It was also the nearest 
road to the estates of the Stanleys, on whose adhesion he 
reckoned with confidence. But the Welsh were lukewarm 
in his cause, and Stanley was kept inactive by his fears for 
his son; so that when Henry arrived at Shrewsbury, his 
army did not exceed 4000 men. Richard, always energetic 
and rapid in his movements, was not wanting to himself at 
such a crisis; he instantly summoned his adherents from 
all quarters ; and his summons was obeyed by many of the 
chief nobles of the kingdom. The Howards brought up 
their followers from the eastern counties; the Percies 
joined him with the hardy borderers of the north; lord 
Lovel led a stout band from Hampshire and the southern 
coast; and when the whole army was collected at Leicester, 
it amounted to 12,000 men, at least doubling the numbers 
of the force about to be opposed to them. Lord Stanley was 
also approaching with 7000 men, a host sufficient to turn the 
scale against him. But, fearing for his son’s life, he delayed 
his march, so as not to arrive till the battle was begun; 
when, to the king’s dismay, he ranged himself on the side 
of Richmond. On the 22nd of August, the two armies met 
at Bosworth, in Leicestershire. Richard fought as became a 
king whose crown was at stake ; he was always skilful and 
brave, and his skill and prowess were never more conspicu- 



XXIV.] EDWARD V. AND RICHARD III. 225 

ous. At last after making desperate efforts to maintain the 
day against the now superior numbers of his adversary, 
encouraged as they were by seeing that part of his own forces 
kept aloof from the contest, he perceived Richmond himself, 
and spurred towards him, hoping to end the conflict by his 
death. In his furious charge he struck down sir W. Bran¬ 
don, his standard-bearer, sir John Cheyney, and other gallant 
knights of less renown, but was hemmed in by the Stanlevs, 
and slain before he could reach his rival. Lord Stanley took 
the crown from off his helmet, and placing it on Richmond’s 
head saluted him as king Henry VII. The body of Richard 
was thrown carelessly across a horse, and buried in the 
church of Grey Friars at Leicester. 

From being the last of his line, and from having been 
superseded by a hostile dynasty, Richard has been more un¬ 
fortunate as regards his reputation than any other sovereign ; 
even the defective title, and the very vices of his successor, 
have been his misfortune. Had Henry reigned by a valid 
right, or had he been a beneficent and popular king, he 
might have afforded to do justice to the virtues of his prede¬ 
cessor, and even to palliate, if he might not conceal, his 
errors. But his own utter want of any legal claim to the 
throne, and his consciousness of his general unpopularity, 
prompted him to endeavour to divert attention from his own 
pretensions and conduct to those of his predecessor, and to 
weaken Richard’s character by every possible means. And 
the servile writers who lived in his reign were not ashamed 
to seek his favour by the most childish falsification of 
history. 

The story of Richard’s humpback and of his withered arm, 
so inconsistent with his notorious prowess as a warrior, and 
the still more monstrous fictions of his having been born 
with teeth and hair, would not injure his character, if true; 
while such tales, if dispassionately considered, ought rather 
to benefit it, by showing the utter untruthfulness and folly 
of the witnesses against him. 

But in fact he is the worst witness against himself. In spite 
of many high and noble qualities, of great abilities, of eminent 
foresight, liberality, and magnanimity, he was, beyond most 
men, a slave to ambition. 

“ Bv that sin fell the angels; how can man then, 

Being lesser than his Maker, hope to win by it?” 

And that passion, the worst of masters when indulged to 

Q 


A.D. 

1483— 
1485. 








226 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.I). 

14H3— 
1485. 


[CH. 

excess, led him to usurp trie inheritance of his youthful 
nephews, who were entrusted to his care and protection as 
their nearest relative; and, we may hardly doubt, to deprive 
them of their lives. Whether he really did put them to 
death or not, his execution of Hastings, Rivers, and Grey, 
without any trial, sufficiently show an arbitrary, ruth¬ 
less disposition, which regarded every thing of less con¬ 
sequence than the maintenance of his ow r n ill-gotten power. 
No display of wisdom or virtue in the exercise of au¬ 
thority so acquired ought to blind us to the greatness 
of such crimes. Yet it is only fair to Richard to remark, 
that we ought not to judge such deeds by the standard 
of our own age, when right is better understood and 
human life more correctly valued. The religious character 
of an action is unchangeable, but its moral aspect must be 
determined in some degree by the habits and feelings of the 
age and nation in which it is done. Dunstan is revered as 
a saint for actions not less inhuman than those for which 
Gardiner and Bonner are held in universal detestation; and 
the fifteenth century was an age of blood, in which scarcely 
any one scrupled at sweeping from their path, by any means 
in their power, all who were, or who seemed likely to be, an 
obstacle to their view T s. We may add that others, guilty 
of similar crimes, have been judged less harshly. Not to 
mention earlier instances, Henry IV. undoubtedly first de¬ 
posed and then murdered his cousin ; yet he has never been 
held up to general execration; and, except in the fact that 
Richard was the protector of his nephews, it is impossible to 
conceive cases more exactly parallel. When he had usurped 
the throne, his wisdom, energy, and proper feeling of what 
his subjects had a right to expect, produced them benefits 
which are surprising indeed, if the brief duration of his reign 
be considered. And we may say of him, that, though the 
crimes by which he raised himself to the supreme power 
shock all our best and holiest feelings, yet he used that 
power well, and displayed qualities which, had he been 
allowed a longer and more tranquil period for their exercise, 
would have done much to atone for his earlier crimes, and 
entitled him to a more honourable 
his nation. 


place among the rulers of 



XXV.] 


HENRY VII. 


227 


CHAPTER XXY. 


HENRY VII. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperor, a.d. 
Maximilian . . 1493 

Spain. 

Ferdinand and 
Isabella . . 1475 


France. a.d. 
Charles VIII. . 1483 
Louis XII. . . 1498 

Scotland. 

James IV. . . 1489 


Popes. A.D. 
Innocent VIII.. 1484 
Alexander VI. . 1492 
Pius III. . . 1503 
Julius II. . . 1503 


The last years of the fifteenth century may be taken as the 
period which marks the commencement of modern history in 
most European countries. The great invention of printing 
had begun to dissipate the dark ignorance which had over¬ 
whelmed the middle ages, and had opened the field of know¬ 
ledge to the world, awakening every kind of genius, and 
stimulating every branch of study. The general introduc¬ 
tion of the compass, leading man across the western ocean to 
America, and pointing out a safer and easier path to the 
orient banks of the Ganges, called forth, in a corresponding 
degree, the practical energies of the seaman, of the conqueror, 
and (at no distant period) of the missionary. 

With these most important discoveries great political 
changes in the principal kingdoms of Europe were nearly 
coincident. The marriage of Eerdinand and Isabella, and 
the subsequent expulsion of the Moors, united Spain into 
one compact monarchy. In Erance the unscrupulous craft 
of Louis XI., by the acquisition of Brittany and of a great 
part of the dominions of Charles the Bold, had greatly added 
to the safety and opulence of that kingdom, while the state 
of subjection to which he had reduced the turbulent nobles 
had equally increased the authority of the crown; and in 
England the same result had been brought about by the civil 
war just terminated, and by the cruel proscriptions and 
executions by which the leaders of each side had disgraced 
their cause; so that many of the old families were extinct, 
and those which remained were generally too crippled in 
their means to be any longer as formidable as they had 
proved in past times to even the most able and powerful 
sovereigns. 

The three centuries which had elapsed since the barons 
extorted the Great Charter from John, had been ages of 

Q 2 


A.D. 

1485— 

1509. 








228 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dl. 

a.h. almost incessant disturbance. There had been more than 
1485— one waFj f our kings had been murdered in cold blood, 

l509 ‘ four times the crown had fallen into the hands of an usurper, 
while long and distant wars, prompted by the unwise and 
fruitless hope of foreign acquisitions, hod drained the re¬ 
sources and wasted the energies of the country. Yet among 
all these unfavourable circumstances, so congenial had been 
the soil in which the barons of Bunnimede had planted the 
sturdy tree of freedom, that it had constantly thriven, and, 
though not yet arrived at the noble proportions, under the 
shade of which we now sit so securely, it had already attained 
a sufficiently ample growth to afford a substantial shelter, 
though it might still occasionally happen that the storm of 
some sudden and brief tyranny might beat aside the 
branches, or drive the people for a while from under its 
protection. 

The great principles of the constitution, already securely 
established, that no man could be kept in prison without a 
trial; that no laws could be made without the consent of 
parliament; and that no taxes could be imposed without the 
authority of the people’s representatives, had protected the 
political rights of the subject against the arbitrary ambition 
•which distinguished most of the kings of the house of Plan- 
tagenet. But the prosperity and happiness of the nation, 
which already struck intelligent foreigners as far superior to 
that of any other people, was perhaps owing still more to 
the regular and impartial administration of the law, with 
which, in general, no monarch or minister had ventured to 
tamper, though in individual cases they had often violated it 
by the unauthorized imprisonment, and even execution of 
obnoxious persons, and to the universal respect for the law 
which had. in consequence, been created in the minds of the 
people. What was most important of all things to the com¬ 
fort and security of the lower orders was the fact, that the 
system of villanage, which, as has been said before, was a 
system of slavery, had become gradually extinguished. It 
was not terminated by any law, but ceased by a natural 
decay, imperceptible in its progress, but one which we may 
hope originated in a gradual refinement of the moral feelings, 
which taught that for one man to possess a property in a 
fellow-man was a wrong and a crime, disadvantageous even 
to him who at first sight might appear to profit by it. 

The export trade of the kingdom had become considerable, 


HENRY VII. 


229 


and the English merchants were honourably known, not a.d 
only in Elanders, but in the more distant markets of the 1485 
Italian cities, then the principal marts for the commodities 1509 
of the east. The population had also greatly increased since 
the conquest, though not as rapidly as in our own times. 
Under William it amounted, as we have seen, to something 
more than a million and a half of persons. It was now 
probably more than double that number; and, what was 
of far more consequence to the future advancement of the 
whole than the mere increase of its numbers, instead of con¬ 
sisting of two different and hostile nations, the conquerors 
and the conquered; of two antagonistic classes, the master 
and the slave, the three millions over whom Henry was now 
to rule formed one united and free nation. 

Henry was twenty-nine years of age when he became king 
of England. In spite of his absence of hereditary right to 
the throne, his accession was hailed with joy by the nation, 
weary of the civil dissensions, and thankful for the prospect 
of their termination. It might have been fortunate for him, 
also, that he had not been mixed up hitherto with either 
party, so that lie had made no personal enemies, if his 
jealous and suspicious temper had not prevented him from 
taking advantage of his neutral position. Proud of having 
been recognized as the head of the Lancastrian family, he 
looked upon the Yorkists as his enemies, and was greatly 
annoyed at the eagerness shown by the parliament that he 
should fulfil the compact, which his friends had made on his 
behalf, by marrying the princess Elizabeth, and also at the 
terms in which they settled the kingdom on himself and his 
heirs, avoiding, as they did, all recognition of any hereditary 
right in him, and seeming to make his throne depend upon, 
a mere parliamentary title. He resolved to counteract their 
views as far as he could by showing that he was able to dis¬ 
pense with any additional weight that his pretensions might 
be expected to derive from his marriage with the princess 
by deferring that ceremony till after his coronation. 

* It would have been well if his jealousy of the Yorkists 
had been confined to such negative measures ; but he had 
only been king two days when it led him into an act of cruel 
and needless tyranny. The duke of Clarence had left a 
son, the young earl of Warwick, fifteen years of age, whom 
Kichard had detained under a sort of honourable confine¬ 
ment in the north. But Henry instantly sent for him to 




230 


IilSTOllY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

1485— 

1509. 


. [CH ‘ 

London, and consigned him to close imprisonment in the 
Tower, which the unhappy youth never quitted but for the 
scaffold : and, in a similar spirit, after the parliament had 
reversed the attainders pronounced against his adherents in 
the late reign 5 , he caused them to pass a similar act against 
the chief supporters of Richard, confiscated their estates, 
and likewise revoked all the grants which had been made by 
the crown since the duke of York had first been appointed 
protector of the kingdom. To say nothing of the impolicy 
of thus openly declaring himself the king of a party, nothing 
could be more flagrantly unjust than to condemn as traitors 
those who had fought for Richard, who was actually king, 
against himself, who never claimed that title till after 
Richard’s death. But the forfeiture of their estates sup¬ 
plied him with the means of rewarding his own partisans; 
and this consideration outweighed all the claims of justice 
and policy. Those whose want of wealth rendered them 
unimportant he pardoned on their taking the oath of alle¬ 
giance. 

Among the victims of Henry’s impolitic severity had been 
lord Lovel, who at first fled to a sanctuary ; but when, the 
next spring. Henry made a progress through the northern 
counties, he quitted his asylum, and endeavoured to avail 
himself of the late king’s popularity in those districts to 
excite an insurrection. It was so unexpected that it very 
nearly succeeded, and was defeated only by the casual 
arrival of the earl of Northumberland with a numerous 
retinue, which had been merely intended to do honour to 
the new king, but which proved his preservation. Lovel 
escaped to Flanders, and his followers laid down their arms, 
and were pardoned. 

Before the end of the year, Henry was greatly gratified 
by an embassy from James of Scotland, sent to renew the 
peace between the two nations, and by the birth of a son, 
to whom he gave the name of Arthur;* but this latter event 
was so far from adding to his popularity, or from giving 
strength to his government, that it was probably among the 
causes of a strange attempt to subvert it. Henry’s cold, 
reserved, and haughty manners were not calculated'to make 
him acceptable to any class of his subjects, and were par- 


5 Henry himself also had been attainted, but the judges decided that his 
attainder did not require a formal reversal, hut was annulled of necessity by 
his accession to the throne. 


HENRY VII. 


231 


ticularly distasteful to the nobles, who considered that he 
owed his throne to their influence and exertions, and who 
soon perceived his designs to destroy their power, and to 
render the crown independent of them. They were also, as 
most of them had belonged to the Yorkist faction, especially 
indignant at his treatment of the queen, whom he had not 
yet permitted to be crowned, nor to be his companion in his 
visits to the different important towns in the kingdom. The 
knowledge of these feelings on their part, and most probably 
the direct instigation of some of their body, prompted a 
priest of the name of Simonds to bring forward a boy, whose 
real name was Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker in Oxford, 
alleging that he was the earl of Warwick who had escaped 
from the Tower. He conducted him to Ireland, where he 
was received by the earl of Kildare, the governor of that 
island, and by all the chief nobles, as the prince. It was in 
vain that Henry produced the real earl, who was his prisoner 
in the Tower, and paraded him through the streets of Lon¬ 
don ; his partisans proclaimed Simnel king in Ireland by the 
title of Edward VI., and prepared to invade England to 
assert his pretended rights. 

They were to be supported by a more formidable expedi¬ 
tion. On the first news of this attempt, Henry had impri¬ 
soned the queen dowager and her son, the marquis of 
Dorset; and the earl of Lincoln, fearing for his own safety, 
had fled to Burgundy. Lincoln was the son of the eldest 
sister of Edward IV., and, after the earl of Warwick, was 
the head of the house of York. He was gladly received by 
the duchess of Burgundy, his aunt, wdio was unwearied in 
her hostility to Henry; and who now, after a consultation 
with him and lord Lovel, gave them a force of 2000 veteran 
soldiers under the command of Martin Swart, a general of 
high reputation. They landed at Dublin, and uniting them¬ 
selves with Simnel, crossed the Channel with him and a 
band of fierce and undisciplined Irish, and landed in Lan¬ 
cashire, in June, 1187. They had expected to be joined by 
numerous partisans in England, but the preposterous nature 
of Simnel’s pretensions was too notorious; and they arrived 
in Nottinghamshire without having received any important 
accession to their force. Henry had collected at Newark 
an army far superior to theirs; and, on the 16th of June, he 
utterly defeated them at Stoke, a hamlet near that town. 
Swart, Lincoln, and Lovel were slain, and Simonds and his 


A.D. 

1485— 
1500. 








232 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. pupil were taken prisoners. They were treated by Henry 
1485— w ith contemptuous mercy; Simonds was indeed imprisoned 
lo09, for life, but Simnel was pardoned and employed in a situa¬ 
tion for which he was better calculated by his birth and 
education than for a throne, being made a scullion in the royal 
kitchen. Henry had less indulgence for those nobles whom he 
suspected of having been privy or favourable to his attempt; 
and he included in this list those who had given credence to 
a report which prevailed in some parts, that the rebels had 
been successful in the late battle. On all these he imposed 
enormous fines, thus gratifying his avarice and his ambition 
by the same measures, which not only filled his treasury, but 
disabled those whom he most feared, and prevented them, 
from being dangerous to the crown in future. 

The termination of this rebellion gave him a long period 
of tranquillity at home; but his attention was called to 
foreign affairs which caused him great anxiety, though in 
the end he contrived to make them also subservient to his 
darling object of amassing money. 

Brittany was still an independent duchy ; but Brands, 
the duke, had only one daughter, whose marriage was an 
object of ambition to more than one potentate. The Bre¬ 
tons would have been well pleased if she had become the 
wife of Henry himself, and he was not disinclined to such 
an alliance, though the superior advantages of marrying the 
princess Elizabeth ultimately prevailed in his mind. The 
chief nobles of that country had lately revolted from Francis, 
had seized his minister, Peter Landois, and executed him as 
a criminal, and had then sought the aid of tjie king of 
France, who was eager to avail himself of any pretence to 
make himself master of that important principality. The 
duke of Brittany applied to Henry for aid, to which he 
considered that he had a claim from the protection and 
assistance which he had afforded him when earl of Rich¬ 
mond. Henry could not deny the reasonableness of his 
expectations, but was very unwilling to acknowledge them in 
any way which might involve him in war. Hot that he was 
deficient either in courage or military skill; but he dreaded 
the expense of military operations; and he was also too sus¬ 
picious of his subjects to be willing to put arms in their 
hands. Still he conceived it was very important for his 
interests to prevent the annexation of Brittany to France, 
and with this view he offered his mediation, which France 



HENRY VII. 


233 


XXV.] 

was willing to accepft, but which was rejected by the Breton 
court, who thought that his interest must at last compel 
him to espouse its cause as its ally ; and so it probably 
would have done had not Henry trusted too much to the 
divisions in the French royal family, which he expected 
would prevent them from acting with vigour; and also to 
the energy and power of the archduke Maximilian, who 
was a suitor for the hand of-Anne, the heiress of the duchy. 
He, therefore, had recourse to policy and intrigue; but as 
the Breton cause, or rather as any opposition to the designs 
of France, was popular in England, he connived at lord 
Woodville, the brother of the queen dowager, raising a body 
of troops and leading them to the assistance of the duke; 
but in July, 1488, they and their Breton allies were wholly 
defeated by the French at St. Aubin ; and the death of the 
duke, which happened soon afterwards, completed the con¬ 
fusion and difficulties of his duchy. 

Convinced at last that he could only save Brittany from 
becoming French by affording it active aid, he made an 
alliance with the young duchess, sending a small army to 
her assistance, on condition of her defraying the whole of its 
cost; but lord Willoughby de Broke, .its commander, was 
baffled by the caution of the French generals, and returned 
to England without having effected any thing worthy of the 
military reputation of his country. The failure of this 
expedition gave additional strength to the French cause in 
Brittany; and at last, though the young duchess had been 
affianced to Maximilian, and though Charles, the king of 
France, had been contracted to Maximilian’s daughter Mar¬ 
garet, who had, in consequence, been sent to Paris for her 
education, Charles sent Margaret back to Germany, and 
besieged the young duchess in Bennes, who, unable to 
maintain the town against the powerful force which at¬ 
tacked it, submitted, though with great reluctance, to the 
advice of her wisest councillors, and, in December, 1491, 
gave her hand to Charles, and, by so doing, for ever united 
her duchy to his kingdom. 

Henry’s policy had been to make a firm ally of Maxi¬ 
milian, in order to bridle the growing power of France ; and, 
with this view, he had assisted him to reduce the revolted 
Flemings, who were supported by Charles; and his general, 
lord Daubeney, had contributed greatly to the victory 
gained over the French at Dixmude, which established the 


A.D. 

1485— 
15011. 





234 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. archduke’s authority in the provinces Maximilian had 
1485 now suffered a double affront, in having his affianced wife 
wrested from him and his daughter rejected; and Henry, 
besides his obligation to assist him, was induced by personal 
considerations to seek to revenge himself on Charles, since, 
to the disappointment of his political views, was added the 
annoyance of having been outwitted by a boy (for Charles 
was little more) possessed of no kind of ability. But, after 
a while, his indignation cooled down, and he contrived to 
compensate himself for it in a way peculiarly his own. He 
announced his intention of carrying war into France, and, 
in spite of the act passed in the late reign, levied a benevo¬ 
lence on his subjects of unprecedented amount; which, 
besides the vastness of the extortion, was celebrated for the 
ingenuity with which Morton, who had been raised to the 
primacy, and was also chancellor of the kingdom, put aside 
all excuses on the part of those who were unwilling to con¬ 
tribute. If they lived frugally, he told them that their 
frugality must have enriched them : did they maintain a 
splendid appearance, or a hospitable table, he argued that 
those who could afford such expense could certainly afford 
to contribute to the vindication of the honour of their sove¬ 
reign and his kingdom; and this dilemma, which was popu¬ 
larly called Morton’s fork, was irresistible in the unscru¬ 
pulous hands of Henry’s commissioners. Parliament also 
voted him a large supply, and the chief nobles put them¬ 
selves to vast expense in preparing to take the field in a 
manner suited to the previous military renown of their 
country, and to the glory which they themselves expected 
to reap. But military glory was too expensive a luxury to 
attract the taste of the king. Under pretence of the war 
he had collected a vast treasure from his subjects; and, 
even before he crossed the Channel, he had begun to con¬ 
trive how to extract a further sum from the French king. 
To give some appearance of reality to his operations he laid 
siege to Boulogne ; but, six weeks after his first landing in 
France, he made peace with Charles, who desired leisure for 
the invasion of Italy ; and who agreed to pay him three- 
quarters of a million of crowns, and an annual pension of 
25,000 more. Henry thus, to use the words of Bacon, sold 
war to his subjects and peace to his enemies, and the profit 
which he made fully reconciled him to his disappointment 
with respect to the French acquisition in Brittany. 




HENRY YIT. 


235 


XXV.] 

It was not, however, to be expected that his subjects, a.d. 
who did not profit by it, would look upon this disgraceful 1485- “ 
transaction with the same complacency. Accordingly, their lo09 ' 
indignation was great; and a singular attempt was now 
made to take advantage of the king’s unpopularity. 

A report had got abroad that the young princes said to have 
been murdered in the Tower in the last reign, had not been 
really put to death, but that one, at least, of them had escaped 
and was alive; and about the end of the year 1491 a youth 
landed at Cork, asserting himself to be Bichard, the younger 
of the two. In person he was remarkably like his assumed 
father, Edward IY.; and this fact, joined to the plausibility 
of the account which he gave of himself, obtained h!m many 
powerful partisans in Ireland. He was invited to France 
and acknowledged by Charles as the heir to the throne of 
England; though, as soon as peace was concluded between 
the two kingdoms, Henry procured his dismissal from that 
country. He then proceeded to Burgundy, to the court of 
the dowager duchess, whom he claimed for his aunt. She, 
professing to have been rendered cautious by the imposture 
of Siinnel, subjected him to a rigorous public examination, 
questioning him on numerous points connected with his 
previous history; till at last she professed herself to be 
perfectly satisfied, acknowledged him for her nephew, and 
gave him a guard of honour and the appellation of the White 
Bose of Eugland. Henry became seriously alarmed, and 
sent emissaries in every direction to discover who this .young 
man really was. After a time they reported that his real 
name was Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant at Tournay. 

He sent news of this discovery to the duke of Burgundy, 
demanding that Warbeck should be-banished from his 
dominions; and when the duke replied that it was beyond 
his power to interfere with the duchess’s management of 
her own estates, he prohibited all commercial intercourse be¬ 
tween that country and England. To satisfy the minds of the 
English, he then compelled sir James Tyrrel to give an 
account of the murder of the princes, in which deed he was 
supposed to have been the chief actor. But as, though Tyrrel 
was said to have affirmed that the bodies were buried at the 
foot of the staircase, the most rigorous search failed to dis¬ 
cover them, his confession did not obtain universal credit. 

It began to be known that several nobles of character and 
influence had expressed their belief in the truth of War- 






236 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [ CH * 

a.d. beck’s statements. Several were instantly arrested and put 
1485 — to death; and the whole nation was startled at finding that 
lo09. g j r William Stanley was one of the victims. He had con¬ 
tributed, more than any man in the kingdom, to place the 
crown on Henry’s head: he had been greatly trusted by 
him, and was lord chamberlain at the time. The evidence 
of his guilt was variously reported, but many argued that if 
he believed in the genuineness of Warbeck’s pretensions, 
such a man must have had ample opportunity of learning 
the truth, and solid grounds for his opinion: while, in the 
judgment of others, his real crime was the greatness of his 
wealth, which, as the necessary consequence of a conviction 
for treason, was forfeited to the crown. 

It was above three years after his first appearance in 
Ireland before Warbeck attempted to land in England. In 
the summer of 1495, he appeared off the Kentish coast; 
but those of his followers who disembarked first were in¬ 
stantly dispersed, and taken prisoners, and, without at¬ 
tempting to land himself, he retired to Elanders; but the 
failure of this attempt, the apparent security of Henry’s 
position, and the injury done to his subjects by the sus¬ 
pension of all commerce with England, now induced the 
duke of Burgundy to consent to the demands, which he 
had previously evaded; and as the price of a commercial 
treaty, of great advantage to his Flemish provinces, he 
agreed to refuse shelter to Henry’s enemies, and likewise 
to compel the dowager duchess to close her dominions' 
against them. 

Warbeck, now deprived of all refuge on the Continent, 
repaired to Scotland, where James IV. not only acknow¬ 
ledged the truth of his story, but also gave him a cousin 
of his own, the lady Catharine Gordon, in marriage, and 
made an inroad into the northern counties of England to 
support his pretensions. The Scotch invasion, however, 
did not dispose the English nobles in general to look more 
favourably on his cause. The Scots were always regarded 
with jealous hostility by the parliament, who now willingly 
voted Henry a considerable supply to enable him to 
chastise them. Among the lower orders, however, this fresh 
tax caused great discontent, which in Cornwall broke into 
open rebellion. The Cornishmen advanced towards London, 
and in Somersetshire were joined by lord Audley, who, 
placing himself at their head, conducted them to the very 




XXV.] 


HENRY VII. 


237 


gates of the metropolis; but Henry had prepared to re¬ 
ceive them with numbers far superior to their own ; and 
in a battle, which took place on Blackheath, the rebels 
were totally defeated, their leaders taken prisoners, and 
executed. 

Henry’s address and resolution triumphed over all attacks 
of his enemies; and James of Scotland despairing of effec¬ 
tually shaking his throne, and having perhaps gained one 
of his objects in the ample spoils with which his late inroad 
had enriched his army, made a truce with him, and, to secure 
his friendship, desired Warbeck to quit Scotland. He 
betook himself to Cornwall, where a considerable number 
of the populace flocked to his standard ; and, at the head of 
3000 men, he advanced eastward, and laid siege to Exeter, 
assuming, for the first time, the title of king of England by 
the name of Richard IV. Henry hastened to the west at 
the head of a considerable army; and Warbeck, hearing of 
his advance, raised the siege of Exeter, and, with a force 
which was now swelled to 7000 men, prepared to engage 
the royal troops. The two armies came in sight of each 
other near Taunton, not far from the spot where nearly 200 
years afterwards Monmouth fled before the life-guards 
of James ; but Warbeck displayed even less courage than 
that unhappy adventurer. Before a blow was struck he 
fled from the field, and sought a sanctuary in the New 
Eorest. At last, on the promise of pardon, he surrendered 
himself, and made a full confession of his whole imposture; 
but soon, impatient of the confinement in which he was 
kept, he escaped, and a second time fled to a sanctuary. 
A second time he surrendered, on promise of safety for his 
life. He was now set in the stocks, compelled to read 
his confession to the populace, and then imprisoned in the 
Tower. On again attempting to escape he was seized, and 
hanged at Tyburn. His wife, the lady Catharine, had 
fallen into Henry’s hands on her husband’s flight from 
Taunton, and was honourably received by him, and made 
one of the queen’s attendants. At a subsequent period she 
married a knight named sir Matthew Cradock, and was 
buried with him in the church of Swansea. 

The fate of Warbeck drew with it that of a nobler victim. 
While in the Tower he had made acquaintance with the 
young earl of Warwick, who had joined him in his attempt 
to escape. It was not pretended that he had ever been 


A.D. 

1485— 

150!). 








238 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. , [dl. 

a.d. guilty of any crime; but for this natural endeavour to 
1485— re g a i n hi s liberty he was tried, condemned, and executed, 
1509 ‘ the last victim to Henry’s jealousy of the house of York. 

Henry was now so manifestly secure on his throne, and 
that security was also so clearly owing to his own vigour 
and ability, that he began to be greatly courted by foreign 
princes, and formed connexions with them of a more ex¬ 
tensive nature than had been entered into by anv former 
king; mixing himself up even with the affairs of the coun¬ 
tries beyond the Alps, so far as to join in the league, which 
the Italian states formed against the king of France; 
and, on the other side of the Pyrenees, contracting a still 
more intimate alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella, whose 
daughter Catharine he obtained, with an immense dowry, 
for his son Arthur; and the next year, when the young 
prince died, he procured a dispensation from the pope to 
allow her to marry his second son, Henry, though he was 
as yet a boy of only twelve years of age; and she was 
accordingly contracted to him, although the marriage did 
not take place in his father’s lifetime. The knights of 
Rhodes chose him as the protector of their order. The 
pope named him the chief defender of Christendom; and 
so great was his influence at Rome, that he obtained a bull 
countenancing the rigid reformation, which, with the aid 
of archbishop Morton, he began to institute among the 
clergy and monastic orders. The pope’s favour was pro¬ 
bably purchased in some degree by a more rigorous enforce¬ 
ment of the laws against heresy; for, towards the end of 
the century numbers of persons were brought to trial on 
that charge, and several of both sexes who were convicted 
were condemned to the flames. 

He was more beneficially employed in passing several 
new and salutary laws both in this kingdom and Ireland; 
especially one in England, which enacted that from that 
time forward no one should be accounted guilty of treason 
for obeying the sovereign in possession of the throne; and 
one in Ireland, known by the name of Poyning’s law, from 
the name of the governor, by which the existing laws of 
England were established in that island, and the consent of 
the English ministry rendered necessary to the introduction 
of any new bill in the Irish parliament. 

Almost equally advantageous to the welfare of the king¬ 
dom was the encouragement which he gave to commerce, 




HENRY VII. 


239 


XXV.] 


and to the dawning zeal for maritime discovery. Very early 
in his reign the great Columbus had sent his brother 
Bartholomew to his court, to lay before him those splendid 
designs, the realization of which has made his name im¬ 
mortal ; and Henry would have patronized his undertaking, 
if he had not been anticipated by the sagacious decision of 
queen Isabella. He did send out Sebastian Cabot a few 
years afterwards, who discovered Newfoundland, and was 
the first European who ever reached the American continent. 
The regulations with which he encumbered trade were less 
salutary, though as the advantages of unrestricted com¬ 
petition were the discovery of a later age, his inability to 
appreciate them cannot be fairly argued to indicate any 
deficiency in political sagacity. 

Even Scotland, by natural position, by long habit, and by 
its alliance with Erance, the most inveterate enemy of 
England, yielded to the influence of his unvaried success, 
and a permanent peace was made between the two countries, 
which was cemented by Henry’s giving his eldest daughter, 
Margaret, in marriage to king James; a marriage by which 
the projects of Edward I. were ultimately realized, when, a 
century afterwards, James YI. of Scotland succeeded to the 
English ihrone, and for ever united the two nations into one 
kingdom. 

The latter years of Henry’s reign have contributed greatly 
to load his memory with discredit. Covetousness had 
always been his ruling passion ; and it is one which is par¬ 
ticularly apt to gain strength with increasing years. He 
was already the richest prince in Christendom, but, not con¬ 
tent with the treasures he had already amassed, he began to 
extort money from his subjects by the most shameful expe¬ 
dients, and the most open perversions of justice. He found 
two unprincipled lawyers, named Empson and Dudley, whom 
he raised to the dignity of barons of the exchequer, and who 
disgraced themselves and their profession by pandering with 
every resource of legal ingenuity to the wicked rapacity of 
their sovereign. Ealse accusations were invented against 
innocent persons, with no other object but that of extract¬ 
ing money from them by way of fines and forfeitures. 
Spies and informers were encouraged. The king’s pardon 
to the grossest criminals was openly sold, and his favour to 
the most innocent or meritorious was only to be procured by 
a bribe. The preferments of the Church, the confirmation 


A.D. 

1485— 

1508. 




240 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


|_CH. 

a.d. of notorious rights, the appointments to the most paltry 
1485 — offices, were all alike made matters of traffic. No person 
was so great as to be out of the reach of these harpies, no 
bribe so paltry as to be beneath their master’s rapacity. 
Nearly 70,000Z. were extracted from lord Abergavenny, while 
poor men were allowed to obtain their objects at as low a rate 
as twenty shillings. It was to little purpose, while these ini¬ 
quities were being perpetrated, that the king caused his 
chancellor to harangue the parliament on the beauty of law 
and justice. Such words, in such mouths, were worse than 
a mockery, and only added to the detestation in which the 
king and his favourites were held by the people. 

It is a curious illustration of the grasping character of 
Henry’s mind, that, in spite of his close connexion with the 
royal family of Spain, when the archduke Philip and his wife 
Joanna, who, by her mother’s death, had lately become 
queen of Castile, were forced by a storm to put into Wey¬ 
mouth, on their way from Flanders to Spain, Henry would 
not allow them to depart till he had extorted from them a 
commercial treaty, on terms very advantageous to the 
English; and till he had compelled Philip to surrender to 
him the earl of Suffolk, the younger brother of the earl of 
Lincoln, who had fallen at the battle of Stoke. 

Henry’s health, though he had only reached middle age, 
had been for some time failing, and his ailments at last ter¬ 
minated in consumption, of which he died, at Richmond, on 
the 22nd of April, 1509, in the fifty-second year of his age, 
and the twenty-fourth of his reign. 

Henry was a prince in whom, though the good qualities 
in fact predominated over the bad, yet the bad ones were of 
such a character, that the dislike which they excited out¬ 
weighed the respect which the good ones might have en¬ 
gendered. For his good qualities were those of the head, 
and appeal only to men’s reason. His bad qualities were 
those of the heart, and such as especially grate upon men’s 
feelings. Pie was courageous, though not daring; sagacious 
in forming plans, resolute in adhering to them; calm in 
hours of tumult and perplexity; and possessed of so much 
skill and address in extricating himself from peril and dif¬ 
ficulty, that in spite of the various insurrections which broke 
out in his reign, and his general and constantly increasing 
unpopularity, his throne was never endangered for a moment. 
He was always a lover of peace, and steady in maintaining 




HENRY VIII. 


241 


XXVI.] 


it, though apparently chiefly from the sordid motive of 
sparing his own treasures. He was not fond of shedding 
blood, though his treatment of lord Warwick is alone suf¬ 
ficient to prove that his regard for human life was not such 
as to interfere for a moment with any steps which he con¬ 
sidered desirable for the advancement of his own views, or the 
preservation of his own power. On the other hand, he was 
entirely cold-hearted and selfish, utterly destitute of gratitude 
or affection, jealous of his nearest relations, suspicious of 
his most faithful servants, cold, reserved, and devoid of all 
frankness, candour, generosity, or magnanimity. To these 
negative vices he added the most grasping and universal 
covetousness, and the most sordid avarice, prompting him 
sometimes to acts of the most contemptible meanness, at 
others to the most lawless and cruel extortion. Still, as 
these bad qualities chiefly concerned individuals, while his 
good qualities affected the general welfare of the state, the 
kingdom increased in prosperity and power during his reign ; 
and, as foreign statesmen looked rather “at the result of his 
government than at the means by which that result was 
obtained, and were less scrupulous than even at the present 
time .in weighing the personal character of a successful 
ruler, he was generally looked up to abroad as an able and 
excellent sovereign, and England had never perhaps been 
considered of greater importance than she was at his death. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

HENRY VIII. 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Maximilian. 

Charles V. . .1519 

Scotland. 

James IV, 

James V. . .1513 

Mary .... 1542 


France. a.d. 
Louis XII. 

Francis I. . . 1515 

Spain. 
Ferdinand. 

Charles V. . . 151G 


Popes. A.D. 
Julius II. 

Leo X. . . . 1513 

Adrian VI. . . 1521 

Clement VII. . 1523 
Paul III. . . 1534 


Henry YIII. was little more than eighteen years old at his 
father’s death, and came to the throne with very great advan¬ 
tages, both personal and political. The excessive unpopularity 
of his father disposed the nation to welcome any change with 

R 


A.D. 

1435— 
1509. 


1509. 








242 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. joy, and bis own personal beauty and splendour of appearance, 

1509. reputation for ability, bis youth, and lively, cordial man¬ 
ners, secured him very general favour on his own account. 
As has been already said, the authority of the crown had 
been greatly increased by the civil wars, which had destroyed 
most of those great nobles who, in earlier times, had been 
separately almost equal, and, when combined, far superior in 
power to the sovereign; and those who remained had been 
greatly impoverished by the expenses and ravages of war, 
and their depression had been studiously increased during 
the past reign. Abroad, to the military reputation of the 
kingdom, which had always been pre-eminent, the late king 
had added a character for political sagacity, which had not 
hitherto been thought the characteristic of the English, but 
which had seemed all that was wanting to render them con¬ 
siderable in every respect; so that on his accession Henry 
was powerful at home, and influential abroad, in a degree 
which perhaps none of his predecessors had equalled. 

Before the death «of his elder brother he had been destined 
for the Church, and the education which had been given to 
him with that view had imbued his mind with a taste for 
literature, though chiefly of the theological and polejnieal 
kind, which had a great effect upon his conduct in more 
than one important instance. 

His first act was to complete his marriage with the 
princess Catharine of Arragon, the widow of his brother 
Arthur, in respect of which his father had exhibited a strange 
and unaccountable vacillation of purpose. At first he had 
procured a papal dispensation to permit it; then he had 
made his son protest against it as forbidden by the divine 
law; then he put aside those scruples, and professed only to 
be waiting till the completion of the payment stipulated as 
Catharine’s dowry; complicating the question further, as his 
queen Elizabeth died soon after his son, by proposals, on his 
own part, to marry Margaret, the sister of the archduke 

1510. Philip, and, after Philip’s death, abandoning that proposal, 
and soliciting the hand of his widow Joanna, the queen of 
Castile. These delays, and Ferdinand’s inability to pay the 
whole sum promised as the princess’s dowry, prevented* any 
further steps being taken during the lifetime of Henry VII. 
But just after his death a third instalment of it was sent, 
and the young king assured the Spanish ambassador of his 
attachment to the princess, and of his resolution to complete 



HENRY VIII. 


243 


XX. VI.] 

liis marriage with her immediately. The question of its 
legality w T as debated in the council, and, though Warham, 
the primate, was adverse to it, the majority decided that it 
was both lawful and advisable, and formally recommended 
it to the king, who willingly adopted such palatable advice, 
and, on the 3rd of June, they were married, though many 
ot the people followed the opinion of the archbishop, and 
doubted the lawfulness of the connexion. 

His next step was far more generally acceptable, though 
it certainly was not more in accordance with law. Empson 
and Dudley were universally detested as the ministers of his 
father’s extortions, and the king was willing to sacrifice 
them to the general indignation. But as it was not easy to 
show w r hat statute they had broken in the letter, or what 
penalty they had incurred, he had them arrested, and sent 
to the Tower, and permitted them to be impeached of 
offences which they undoubtedly had not committed, and, 
when they had been convicted without the slightest evi¬ 
dence, signed the warrant for their execution as guilty of 
high treason. 

The first two years of the new reign were years of peace, 
and, being such, they allowed Henry leisure to gratify his 
taste for splendour and pageantry, such as had never been 
seen in England, and in which he dissipated the greater part 
of the vast treasures which his father had hoarded and 
bequeathed to him. But at the end of that time he was 
induced to join the league which pope Julius was forming 
against Louis XII., with the object of expelling the French 
from Italy. The pope sent him a sacred rose, which had 
received the apostolic benediction; but the bait which chiefly 
attracted him to engage in a war, in which he could have no 
possible concern, was the hope that Julius would deprive 
Louis of the title of Most Christian King, and transfer it to 
himself; so childish were the motives for which kings in 
those ages did not hesitate to plunge nations in war. 

A war with France was always popular in England, and 
parliament readily voted supplies. An army of 10,000 men 
was placed under the command of lord Dorset, and, as 
Louis’s power was greatly weakened by his losses in his 
Italian campaigns, the whole' iiation was fired with the 
hope of recovering Normandy, and the other provinces in 
France which had formerly belonged to the English crown. 
But king Ferdinand, Henry’s father-in-law, who knew better 

* r 2 


A.D. 

1510. 


1511. 

1512. 






244 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. than most men how to make others labour in his service, 

1512. had the art to persuade him not to invade France on the 
northern frontier, but rather to land in Fontarabia, where, 
as that province was close to the Spanish borders, he could 
be aided by a Spanish force to recover Guienne; and he 
offered to send a fleet to transport the English army to that 
coast. Dorset soon found out that Ferdinand’s real object 
was to possess himself of the small kingdom of Navarre, 
which lay in the north-east of Spain, between that kingdom 
and France ; and, as he had no orders to co-operate in any 
such undertaking, and found that Ferdinand had not the 
least intention of fulfilling his promises of aiding him in an 
invasion of Guienne, he returned home again, and endea¬ 
voured to convince his master of the selfish character of 
Ferdinand’s policy. 

j 513 # The winter was spent in preparing for a second invasion 
on the side more exposed to an attempt from the English 
coast; and, early in 1513, the king himself sailed for Calais 
with 25,000 men. An indecisive action, in which sir Edward 
Howard, the English admiral, was killed, took place between 
the fleets of the two countries : but the chief efforts of each 
were reserved for the land. Henry himself loitered for some 
time at Calais, delighting the citizens with the unusual mag¬ 
nificence of his revelry and kingly state, professing to wait 
till he was joined by the emperor. But Maximilian, whose 
empty treasury had gained him the nickname of the Money¬ 
less, brought him but a very scanty reinforcement, but flat¬ 
tered him by calling himself only a captain in his service, 
and receiving, as such, one hundred crowns a day, a pay 
which was as acceptable to his necessities as the compliment 
was to Henry’s vanity. 

Before Henry left Calais, his lieutenants, lord Shrewsbury 
and lord Hubert, had laid siege to Terouenne ; and the town, 
though gallantly defended, was reduced to such distress that 
the French generals who commanded a considerable force 
in the neighbourhood, though restrained by the express 
orders of Louis from hazarding a battle for its relief, deter¬ 
mined to make an attempt to throw in supplies of food and 
ammunition. A strong body of cavalry was stationed in the 
heights of Guinegatte to attract the attention of the besieg¬ 
ers, while Fontrailles, one of the most daring of the French 
captains, who had already succeeded in one attempt made 
on a smaller scale, was to ride up to the walls with a body 



HENRY VIII. 


245 


9 

XXVI.] 


of light horse, each man carrying behind him a bag of 
powder, and another of salt pork. But Maximilian, who, 
in spite of the subordinate position which he had chosen, 
was a skilful general, and, as such, had a principal voice in 
the operations, comprehending the whole design, moved a 
heavy force of English and German cavalry to the rear of 
the troops on Guinegatte, to cut olf their retreat. They, 
when they saw themselves intercepted, began to retire, and 
fell back on a rear-guard of cavalry so precipitately, that the 
two squadrons only threw one another into confusion. The 
English pressed on. The Erench commanders (the annals 
of their nation had no names more honoured than those 
of La Palisse, Bussy D’Amboise, Longueville, D’lmbercourt, 
and Bayard) strove in vain to keep order in their ranks, 
but all was confusion and dismay. Bayard, the knight who 
knew no fear, and never deserved reproach, made almost 
superhuman efforts to rally his countrymen, and to check 
the advance of the enemy, but in vain. He himself was 
taken prisoner, with several other knights, and the whole force 
was utterly routed. The slaughter was trifling, for, except 
Bavard, the Erench scarcely struck a blow; and the English 
could not overtake the flying foe. No one could impute 
cowardice to the knights of France, and above all to such 
as were engaged on that day, so that their sudden panic 
brought rather ridicule than shame upon them; and the 
conflict received the name of the battle of the Spurs, those 
being the weapons chiefly used by the defeated party. 

The victory, however, which in skilful hands might have 
been productive of decisive consequences, since it deprived 
Louis of the services of the most celebrated warriors of his 
army, only served to show the utter incapacity of Henry to 
conduct military operations. Being bold and daring, and 
possessed of great bodily strength and address in the use 
of arms, he was always eager to mix personally in the con¬ 
flict ; and, in time of peace, there was no amusement of 
which he was so fond as of jousts and tournaments, and 
other athletic sports, in which he rarely found his equal; 
but for the conduct of war he had no genius whatever, 
and Maximilian, though far more able, was led away by Ids 
own petty and selfish objects; so that, instead of advancing 
the whole army, and overpowering the Erench infantry with 
their superior numbers, which would have placed all the 
north of France, and the metropolis at their mercy, they 
returned to the siege of Terouenne, which was soon taken 


A.D. 

1513. 






246 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

d. and dismantled of its fortifications, and then laid siege to 

l3 * Tournay, a French city on the Flemish frontier, the capture 
of which was a great security to Maximilian’s Flemish 
dominions, but could have little effect on the general issue of 
the war. Tournay soon fell; and as the bishopric of the 
see was vacant at the time, Henry bestowed it on his new 
favourite, Wolsey, a man whose remarkable career and 
extraordinary talents deserve a more particular notice. 

Thomas Wolsey, born in 1471, afterwards cardinal 
archbishop of York, chancellor of England, and the most 
powerful subject that the kingdom has ever seen, w r as the 
son of a butcher at Ipswich; but, as he very early show r ed 
unusual abilities, his father sent him to Oxford, where he 
distinguished himself, and became a fellow of Magdalen 
College, and afterwards tutor to the sons of the marquis of 
Dorset, chaplain to the primate, and at last to Henry VII. 
himself. He had eminently the talent of making himself 
acceptable to those from whom he looked for promotion; 
and having been selected by the king to go on an embassy 
to Maximilian, whose daughter Margaret he was anxious 
to make his wife, he executed his commission with such 
despatch, and such diplomatic ability, that he fixed himself 
firmly in the favour of his sovereign; and, when he died, 
he was recommended by his former pupil, who had become, 
by the death of his father, marquis of Dorset, to the new king. 
He now laid aside the gravity of demeanour, and regularity 
of conduct, which he had assumed for the last year or two; 
and, by entering into all the young sovereign’s humours, and 
joining in all the revelry and dissipation of the court, he 
so ingratiated himself with him, that in a very short time 
he supplanted even lord Surrey, the most trusted minister 
of his father, and at first his own favourite companion. 
He was appointed almoner to the king; and though this 
office gave him no political authority, he soon managed to 
acquire that, persuading the king, who cared for nothing 
but his pleasure, not to vex himself about business, which 
was distasteful to him, but to allow him to be present at 
the council in his stead. Henry willingly gave him the 
permission which he required; and from this time forth 
"Wolsey was, in fact, the prime minister of the kingdom ; 
and, in 1512, he received the formal appointment of lord 
treasurer. Not long afterwards he became archbishop of 
York, chancellor, cardinal, and legate of the pope; and the 
pomp and magnificence which he displayed was such as 







HENRY VIII. 


247 


XXVI.] 

had scarcely ever been equalled by the proudest sovereign, a.d. 
His household, in which even barons and earls condescended 1513 - 
to hold office, consisted of 800 persons; and when, in the 
latter years of his life, he went on an embassy to France, 
he required Francis I. to receive him as his equal; that 
sovereign actually brought his whole court to Amiens, half¬ 
way between Paris and Calais, to receive him, alighted from 
his horse to embrace him, and treated him in every respect 
as he had demanded. 

For the last seventeen years of his life the history of 
the kingdom is identified with that of this powerful minister. 
Through the depression of the aristocracy, and the timidity 
and servility of both houses of parliament, the power of the 
king in this reign was little short of absolute, and the whole 
of that power was wielded by Wolsey. The most powerful 
monarchs sought to propitiate him by the most lavish gifts, 
and the most monstrous flattery; and some of the most 
important events which took place in Europe had their 
origin in his ambition or resentment. 

The news of the battle of the Spurs had scarcely reached 
England, when its fame was eclipsed by a far more im¬ 
portant victory. James IY. of Scotland had, or fancied 
that he had, several just causes of complaint against the 
English; and the absence of Henry in France appeared to 
offer him a favourable opportunity of 'obtaining that redress 
by force of arms, which he could not procure by negotiation. 

He was eager also to make an effective diversion in favour 
of his ally, king Louis; and, with a head full of the chi¬ 
valrous romance which in bygone days had prompted many 
an absurd enterprise, and also many an heroic deed, but 
which was now almost extinct, he burned to merit the favour 
of Anne of Brittany, the queen of France, who had sent him 
a ring and one of her gloves, and charged him, as her 
knight, to merit her favour by the invasion of England. 

It was to no purpose that his queen was Henry’s sister; 
in fact, one of his complaints against Henry was, that he 
refused to give up the jewels which her father had be¬ 
queathed to her. James levied an army of above 50,000 
men, crossed the Tweed, and took several of the fortresses, 
which were erected to defend the English border. Surrey, 
w r ho was commanding in the north, marched with little 
more than half his numbers to check his ravages; and, on 
his arrival in the valley of the Tweed, found the Scottish 







A.D. 

1513. 


1514- 

1510. 


248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

I 

army strongly posted on Hodden, one of the Cheviot 
hills. 

Who, after Scotland’s poet, shall tell of Scotland’s defeat P 
Surrey crossed the Till, a deep brook on the Scottish flank, 
without interruption, as James, in the true spirit of a knight- 
errant, had boasted to him that he did not place his trust 
in the ground, but would encounter him on a fair field. 
"When the whole English army had crossed the water, 
James set fire to his baggage, and descended from the hill, 
the smoke hiding his march so completely, that the two 
armies came almost to close quarters before they saw each 
other. The battle was stubbornly contested. Though the 
English army was less in number, in artillery it was far 
superior. The right wings of both armies were broken and 
almost routed. The centres, where James and Surrey 
fought in person, long maintained a doubtful struggle. It 
had been four o’clock in the afternoon before the battle 
began; and it continued till it was terminated by the 
night, when Surrey drew off his men, as yet uncertain 
what had been the result of the contest. The next morn¬ 
ing, however, showed him the Scottish host in full retreat; 
they had already ascertained the irreparable magnitude of 
their loss. The numbers of the slain had been nearly equal 
on both sides; but while the loss of the English was con¬ 
fined to the common soldiers, scarcely any knight of more 
than ordinary reputation being included among the slain, 
the Scots had to lament the deaths of all their principal 
nobility, and of James himself, who fell fighting among 
the foremost, within a lance’s length of Surrey’s banner; 
so that though, in some respects, it was almost a drawn 
battle, it had all the consequences of the most fatal defeat; 
and there is no province of Scotland, even at this day, where 
it is mentioned without a sensation of terror and sorrow. 

The war, which had been raging over the whole Continent, 
was suddenly put an end to by the death of pope Julius, 
and the raising of Leo X. to the papacy. The new pope, 
an accomplished, and, in some respects, an able man, with 
neither genius nor taste for war, immediately on his pro¬ 
motion sent circular letters to the difterent princes to 
exhort them to make peace, and revoked the censures 
which his predecessor had pronounced against Louis. That 
sovereign, whom the confederacy against him had nearly 
ruined, had already begun to break it up, by working oil 




HENRY VIII. 


249 


XXVI.] 

the selfish ambition of king Ferdinand, who, now that he 
had made himself master of Navarre, was not inclined to 
make further efforts for objects which could produce him no 
personal aggrandizement, and was easily won by the offer 
of Louis to give his second daughter, lienee, in marriage to 
his grandson Charles, with his claim to the duchy of Milan 
for her dowry ; and as Charles was also the grandson of Maxi¬ 
milian, the emperor was easily persuaded to accede to the 
treaty, of which so desirable a condition was to be the basis. 

Henry was very indignant at finding his allies thus pre¬ 
pared to desert him ; and the more so, because Charles had 
been affianced to his own sister Mary; and his feelings of 
irritation were skilfully taken advantage of by the duke de 
Longueville, who had been his prisoner since the day of the 
Spurs ; and who, as Louis’s queen, Anne of Brittany, was 
lately dead, now proposed to him an alliance between his 
master and the princess Mary. Henry gladly embraced the 
idea, and in a very short time peace was concluded, and the 
marriage was celebrated in October, 1514. But the gaiety 
and festivity which ensued proved too much for the strength 
of Louis, who, though little more than fifty years of age, had 
long been in bad health; and on the first day of the next 
year he died, leaving his kingdom, as he had no male children, 
to his cousin and son-in-law, the duke d’Angouleme, who 
ascended the throne with the title of Francis I. 

The death of Louis had very nearly had the effect of dis¬ 
solving the peace so lately made between France and Eng¬ 
land, as Francis was not inclined to aid Wolsey in obtaining 
full possession of the bishopric of Tournay, which Henry 
had conferred on him; when Ferdinand of Spain died, and 
was succeeded by his grandson Charles, who was already, 
in right of his father the archduke Philip, sovereign of 
Flanders, and whose power and authority were such that 
Francis saw the necessity of allying himself closely with 
Henry, if he would preserve an equality on the Continent 
with so dangerous a rival. He now, therefore, paid the 
most eager court to Wolsey, gave him, as an equivalent for 
the revenues of the see of Tournay, a pension of greater 
value; and by professing to consult him on all the most im¬ 
portant affairs, flattered at once his cupidity and his vanity. 

A year or two followed marked by no important events, 
till, at the beginning of 1519, Maximilian died, and Francis 
and Charles at once declared themselves competitors for the 


A.D. 

1514 — 
151 !). 





250 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 




[CH. 

a.d. imperial crown. Henry was also tempted to offer himself 
1514— as a candidate, but finding that he was too late in the field, 
151U. j ie w itlid reW , and comforted himself with the idea that he 
held the balance between the rivals, and that his influence 
would decide the contest. That influence was at last excited 
in favour of Charles, who was elected emperor; and to ap¬ 
pease the resentment of Francis, Henry agreed to cross the 
Channel in order to have a personal interview with him on the 
borders of the French and English dominions. Even after 
he had given this promise he tried by every sort of idle excuse 
to evade the performance of it, till Francis got rid of his ex¬ 
cuses by referring every thing to the decision of Wolsey, 
who fixed May, in the ensuing year, as the time, and a spot 
near Gfuisnes as the place where the monarchs should meet. 
Then Henry professed the greatest eagerness for the inter- 
1519— view, and swore that he would never more cut his beard till 
1520. it had taken place. Francis bound himself by a similar oath. 
But when beards, in consequence, became the French fashion, 
it was found that they had not become an English one, for 
that Henry had broken the oath which his ally had kept so 
religiously, and his ambassador was forced to apologize for his 
perjury, on the ground that queen Catharine declined to kiss 
her husband unless he shaved himself in his usual manner. 

The emperor had done his utmost to prevent the meeting 
between Henry and Francis; but, finding that beyond his 
power, he resolved to anticipate it; and the plan which he 
proposed suited Wolsey so well that it was adopted. 
Wolsey was anxious to see Francis himself, to engage him 
to support his claims in the papacy at the next vacancy; 
and it was apparent that the support of Charles, as king of 
Spain and emperor, would be still more important. Accord¬ 
ingly, four or five days before Henry was to sail for Calais, 
Charles arrived at Dover without any state, professing that, 
as he was passing the English coast, on his wav from Spain 
to Flanders, it occurred to him to pay a visit of affection to 
his aunt, the queen ; and, after four days spent with the 
court at Canterbury, he departed, having won the king’s 
friendship by the frank confidence shown in his visit, and 
the cardinal's good will by the vast presents and promises 
which he had made him. 

The next week the meeting between Henry and Francis 
took place, and presented the most gorgeous spectacle that- 
had ever been seen in Europe. Francis would have been 









HENRY VIII. 


251 


XXVI.] 

contented with a less costly parade, which would have better 
suited the finances of his kingdom, exhausted by its Italian 
campaigns; but finding that Wolsey, to whom the chief 
management on both sides was committed, was resolved on 
display, he submitted with a good grace, and vied with the 
English monarch in the numbers and splendour of his 
retinue. The nobles on each side exhibited the same emu¬ 
lation, and many of them, wearing, as one of the chroniclers 
of the day expresses it, their mills, their forests, and their 
meadows on their backs, impoverished themselves for years 
by the expenses which they now incurred. The very tents 
were made of cloth of gold, and were filled within with the 
most gaudy and costly furniture; and, from the dazzling ap¬ 
pearance of the whole, the meeting received the name of the 
“ Eield of the Cloth of Gold,” by which it is still generally 
known. The two kings met on horseback in the middle of 
the plain, and then retired to a tent prepared for them to 
discuss the matters of state w r kich had been the ostensible 
object of the interview. But these soon gave way to fes¬ 
tivity and revelry. The two kings, with fourteen chosen 
knights on their side, held a tournament, in w'hich they 
kept the field against all comers; and they themselves, 
being both pre-eminent for strength and skill, gained the 
chief renown, defeating every one who ventured to cross 
lances with them. The queens beheld the combats from 
galleries erected for the purpose, and the evenings were 
spent in the most superb banquets and every kind of fes¬ 
tivity. At the first meeting of the kings, Henry had shown 
a delicate courtesy to Francis, in omitting from the head¬ 
ing of the treaty which was proposed the title of king of 
France, which had been assumed by the English sovereigns 
ever since the time of Henry V.; but still every subse¬ 
quent interview was regulated by the most jealous suspicion, 
and every precaution was taken to prevent any treachery 
which either of them might meditate against his ally, till 
Francis broke through the odious ceremonial by which they 
were both surrounded by riding into the English camp 
attended by only two esquires and a page. Henry met him 
with equal cordiality; they exchanged gifts of immense 
value, and from that moment complete confidence was esta¬ 
blished between them. 

Francis, however, was greatly disappointed when he found 
that, on quitting Guisnes, Henry went to Gravelines to 


A.D. 

1519— 

1520. 







252 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. return the emperor’s visit, and that Charles accompanied 
1520. him back to Calais, where he spent four more days in close 
conferences with him and the cardinal. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

HENRY VIII. (CONTINUED). 

1521. The beginning of the next year was stained with the blood 
of the greatest nobleman in England. The duke of Bucking¬ 
ham was descended from the youngest son of Edward III., 
and was the nearest heir to the crown if the king should die 
without issue. He had been incautious enough to specu¬ 
late upon and to speak openly of the possibility of his suc¬ 
cession, and had even consulted a Carthusian friar, named 
Hopkins, who had a considerable reputation as an astro¬ 
loger, on the subject. It was still more unfortunate for 
him that he had given mortal offence to Wolsey by satirical 
comments on the wasteful profusion of the late visit to 
Erance, on the success of which the cardinal especially 
prided himself. He was brought to trial on the charge of 
having imagined the king’s death, and executed on Tower 
Hill, to the great grief of the people, by whom he was 
greatly beloved, and who saw with great indignation almost 
the last of the Plantagenets sacrificed, as they conceived, to 
the arrogance of one who, sprung from their own class, pro¬ 
voked their envy by his unparalleled ostentation. 

Eor Wolsey certainly did not bear his honours meekly; 
no monarch had ever equalled the pomp with which he daily 
traversed the streets on a mule caparisoned with scarlet 
velvet, and gilt stirrups, preceded by a long array of maces 
and other ensigns, from his palace at Whitehall to the Court 
of Chancery. At the same time it must be recorded to his 
honour, that his conduct as a judge was unimpeachable, his 
diligence and despatch great, his ability conspicuous, his de¬ 
cisions invariably just and impartial. Nor was this his 
only claim to praise; his patronage of merit was discerning 
and constant, and his zeal for the promotion of education 
was evidenced by his foundation of noble colleges at Ipswich 
and Oxford; one of which remains, to this day, one of the 
most splendid academical institutions of the kingdom. 

In the mean time an event had taken place in Germany 





HENRY VIII. 


253 


XXVII.] 

# 

which soon made itself felt in every quarter of the civilized 
world. The Reformation' had broken out. In that countrv 
disaffection to the Romish authority had been steadily on 
the increase ever since the execution of Huss; and the in¬ 
troduction of printing had stimulated and facilitated inquiry 
into the truth ; so that the state of the people was gradually be¬ 
coming more and more ripe for a change ; and nothing was 
wanting but some impulse sufficient to set in motion minds 
that had long been prepared for it. That impulse was now 
supplied by the rapacity of the pope, who, desirous to re¬ 
cruit his exhausted treasury, commissioned the archbishop 
of Magdeburg to raise him a sum of money by the sale of 
indulgences throughout Germany. The archbishop em¬ 
ployed Tetzel, a Dominican friar, as his agent, who executed 
his charge with the most shameless contempt of all decency, 
till his extravagance raised the opposition of Martin Luther, 
an Augustine monk, a man of great learning, and of an in¬ 
quiring spirit, whose studies had already led him to doubt 
the agreement of many of the practices of the see of Rome 
with the Scripture, from which alone they could derive their 
authority. It would exceed the limits of a work like this, 
nor does it belong to a history of England, to detail the 
steps by which he gradually proceeded from his objections to 
one action to a complete denial of the authority of the pope. 
It is sufficient to say here, that Leo, who at first looked 
upou his arguments with contempt and even with amuse¬ 
ment, perceived, at last, that his whole power was seriously 
menaced, and issued a formal condemnation of Luther’s 
writings. In accordance with the papal sentence, Wolsey, 
as legate, in May, 1521, went in a solemn procession to St. 
Paul’s, where, after a sermon on Luther’s errors had been 
addressed to the njultitude by the bishop of Rochester, his 
writings were burnt by the common executioner. Henry 
himself, whose early studies had been chiefly of a theological 
character, shared his minister’s indignation at the pre¬ 
sumptuous reformer, and undertook to write a book in 
refutation of his errors. It was in vam that one ol the 
wisest of his councillors, More, warned him of the impolicy 
of thus binding himself, before the eyes of the world, to a 
perpetual adherence to the doctrines of a potentate with 
whom, at a future time, he might be less inclined to be 
friendly. The influence of Wolsey, who desired to see him 
pledge himself publicly and irrevocably to the maintenance 


A.D. 

1522. 







254 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[cii. 

a.d. of the existing forms, prevailed, and the book was published 
and presented to the pope, who gratified the royal author 
with the highest praise of his performance, and with the 
title of Defender of the Faith, which succeeding popes would 
soon have been glad to recal, but which still remains, though 
not in the sense in which it was conferred, a well-merited 
title of the sovereign of Great Britain. 

At the end of the year Leo died, and Wolsev, confiding in 
the promises of support which he had received from Charles 
and from Francis, entertained sanguine hopes of succeeding 
him; but a Fleming, who had formerly been the emperor’s 
tutor, was chosen, and Wolsev, considering that his election 
must have been owing to Charles’s influence, and that he, there¬ 
fore, had been mocked by promises which were never intended 
to be performed, conceived, from this time forth, a settled 
enmity to that prince, though he, for a time, dissembled his 
feelings, in the hope, as the new pope was old, that he might 
perhaps obtain his support in the event of a fresh vacancy. 

In fact he had so entangled Henrv in the mazes of the 
emperor’s ambitious and crooked policy, that he could not 
at once draw back. Charles had shown every desire to pick 
a quarrel with Francis on very trivial pretences, and, when 
he afterwards offered to submit the matters in dispute to 
arbitration, Francis, who, on the first appearance of hos¬ 
tilities, had collected a powerful army, and thought that he 
saw a favourable opportunity of driving the Spaniards out of 
Navarre, which Ferdinand had conquered at the beginning 
of Henry’s reign, at first declined his proposal, but after a 
time accepted it. Wolsey, by the consent of both parties, 
was chosen umpire between them, and, in August, 1521, 
went to Calais to preside over a conference, which they pro¬ 
fessed to hope might lead to the re-establishment of peace. 
The demands of the imperial ambassadors, however, were so 
unreasonable, that that hope was disappointed, though 
Francis suspected, as he had ample reason, the good faith of 
the cardinal, and apprehended that, in the war which he saw 
impending, he should find the English arrayed on the side of 
Charles. Wolsey did not long preserve even the appearance 
of impartiality; but, even during the conference, went to 
Bruges to pay a visit to the emperor, who received him 
with as much state as if he had been a king; and a secret 
compact was made that Henry should break an agreement, 
which he had previously made with Francis, to give his 





HENRY VIII. 


255 


XXVII.] 

daughter Mary to the dauphin, and should bestow her on a.d. 
Charles, and should the next year join him in the war against 
France with 40,000 men. Moisey even contemplated adding 
a military office to his other appointments, and commanding 
a portion of the English force himself; but Henry’s evident 
disapproval caused him to abandon that design. 

Having thus committed the king to a close alliance with 
the emperor, he could not retreat at once; and, in the hope 
of removing the irritation which there could be no doubt of 
his feeling at the disappointment of his views, Charles the 
next year paid another visit to England, in which he sought, 
bv fresh promises and magnificent presents, to recover his 
confidence, and succeeded so far that, immediately on his 
departure, Henry declared war against France, and sent 
lord Surrey, with a considerable force, to invade Normandy; 
but the skill of the duke de Vendome, who was opposed to 
him, prevented his obtaining any important success, and an 
unusually wet season spread disease among his men, so that 
the campaign produced neither honour nor advantage. 

Henry proposed to efface the recollection of his failure on 
this occasion by an expedition on a larger scale, and to do 
this he required money. The annual payments wdiich Francis 
had agreed to make him were of course terminated by the 
war. The vast treasures left by his father, though amount¬ 
ing to nearly tw r o millions of money, had long since been 
dissipated, and he was forced to apply to his people. He 
first, by his own authority, compelled the city of London to 
furnish him with a large sum under the name of a loan; 
and, as this was wholly insufficient, he summoned a parlia¬ 
ment, the first for several years, and demanded no less than 
800,000Z., to be raised by a tax of twenty per cent, upon all 
property of every kind, while a still heavier contribution was 
required from the clergy. Such a demand was so unpre¬ 
cedented and intolerable that the house of commons, 
though it had lost much of its old spirit of independence, 
showed signs of resistance. Wolsey came down to the 
house himself in the hope of intimidating the members ; but 
by the advice of More, the speaker, he was received with 
profound silence, and, when lie expostulated, was distinctly 
told that the members were only used to debate among 
themselves, and that they would not discuss the matter with 
him. He was forced to retire unsatisfied. At last they 
voted a sum amounting to about half what had been 






256 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [OIL. 

a.d. demanded, payable by instalments in four years. But 

1522. 'Wolsey exacted it in one, and resolved to rule for the 
future without the aid of so refractory a body. Seven years 
elapsed before another parliament was summoned, during 
which the cardinal levied money by the royal authority, 
extorted benevolences in spite of the statute of Bichard III., 
sent commissioners through all the kingdom, who compelled 
men to give upon oath a statement of their property, and to 
contribute such a proportion of it as he saw fit, till he 
became universally detested as the subverter of the liberties 
of the people, whom he was trying, as it was said, to reduce 
to the state of the French, and serious insurrections broke 
out in more than one county. 

The king had especial reason to wish for a full treasury 
at the commencement of the year 1523; for not only was 
there an apparent probability of a revival of the w'ar with 
Scotland, where the duke of Albany, who had been appointed 
regent during the minority of the new kiug. prevented the 
renewal of the truce made after the battle of Flodden, pro¬ 
cured the rejection of Henry’s offer to marry his daughter 
Mary to his youthful sovereign, and marched to the borders 
with an army which the English generals in that district 
had no means of resisting, though his incapacity or timidity 
was such that he afterwards retreated without having seen 
an enemy, or performed a single military exploit; but at the 
same time a prospect offered itself to Henry of making him¬ 
self master of the greater part of the kingdom of France. 

1523. Francis had endeavoured to give him occupation in his 
own dominions by exciting the earl of Desmond to raise a 
rebellion in Ireland, and to set up the claims of Bichard de 
la Pole, the last survivor of the house of York, to the throne ; 
and De la Pole, who had found safety in France ever since 
the execution of his kinsman the earl of Suffolk at the 
beginning of this reign, was prepared to invade England 
with a French force on the first favourable opportunity. 
But while the king of France was thus exciting Henry’s 
subjects against him, he was in far greater peril himself from 
the disaffection of one of his own nobles. 

The duke of Bourbon, constable of France, w r as not only 
nearly related to the royal family, and by far the richest 
and most powerful subject in the kingdom, but was also 
possessed of the very highest military reputation and ability. 
He had, however, offended tbe king’s mother, Louisa of 




HENRY VIII. 


257 


XXVII.] 

Savoy, a most licentious, revengeful, and rapacious woman, a.d. 
by rejecting her offer of marriage after the death of his 1623 - 
wife; and she determined to effect his ruin. She per¬ 
suaded her son to deprive him of the command of the 
vanguard of the army, which belonged to his office as con¬ 
stable; to wrest from him some of the estates to which 
he had succeeded in right of his wife, a granddaughter of 
Louis XI., on pretence that they had reverted to the crown; 
she brought frivolous actions against him herself for others 
of his estates; and the chancellor Duprat and most of the 
judges were so profligate, and so wholly devoted to her 
interests, that there was little doubt that their decision 
would be in her favour; and Bourbon felt assured that she 
would not rest till she had stripped him of every thing, 
and reduced him to a state of degradation and beggary. 

He determined to counteract her schemes; but even the 
affronts which he had received, and the dangers with which 
he was menaced, cannot excuse the measures which his 
resentment led him to adopt. The principle of loyalty to the 
sovereign had been too much undermined during the wars of 
the last century, and there had been too many instances of 
its having but a slight hold over the minds of the English 
and Erench nobles, to allow us to be much surprised at 
the injustice and ingratitude of Erancis overpowering such 
a feeling in the breast of the haughty constable, who had 
often been heard to quote with approval the sentiment that 
the conduct to which no expectation of gain should tempt 
a man of honour might be justified by the slightest affront, 
or at his thinking the king entitled to his duty and obe¬ 
dience only so long as his fortunes and honour were safe 
under the protection of the royal favour and justice. But 
his country was surely entitled to no such conditional alle¬ 
giance ; and yet he now resolved to betray that country 
to its most persevering enemies, and to dismember it so 
completely as to prevent it from ever recovering its former 
independence. He opened negotiations with Henry and 
Charles, proposing that several large provinces in the south¬ 
east should be erected into a kingdom for himself; that 
Charles, besides recovering Burgundy, to which he had 
hereditary claims, should receive Picardy, Champagne, and 
the rich district of Languedoc; while Henry should be 
assisted in conquering the whole of the rest of the country, 
and should be acknowledged as king of Erance; and he 

s 







A.D. 

1523. 


1524. 


258 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

offered either to seize Francis on one of his journeys, or, 
if disappointed in that attempt, to cut off his return from 
the invasion of Italy, for which he was preparing, while his 
confederates took advantage of the king’s absence to over¬ 
run the whole country, which that absence w r ould have left 
defenceless. His plot was well laid ; and it was only in 
consequence of accidental delays, which prevented Francis 
from joining his army in Lombardy as soon as he had in¬ 
tended, that he received intelligence of it while still in 
France, and that it failed of at least a temporary success; 
but Bourbon, finding the king’s suspicions awakened, fled ; 
his flight interrupted his communication with his allies at 
the most critical moment, and, before a fresh plan of opera¬ 
tions could be reconstructed, events had happened which 
made Wolsey less inclined to aid in depressing Francis, or 
in raising the emperor at his expense. 

Pope Adrian died in September, the week after Bourbon 
had made his escape, and Wolsey was doomed again to 
experience the disappointment of his hopes, and to see the 
elevation of Giulio de Medici, who took the name of 
Clement VII., and whose vigorous age and health deprived 
him of any reasonable expectation of another vacancy of the 
holy see, while he should be in a condition to profit by it. 
It is quite as probable that his defeat was owing to the 
hostility of the cardinals in the French interest, as to the 
insincerity of Charles; but Wolsey attributed it wholly to 
the latter cause, and became in consequence fully resolved 
to break off the connexion between that prince and his 
own sovereign; and Henry was the more inclined to fall 
in with his views, from being disgusted at another ineffec¬ 
tual campaign made by his brother-in-law, the duke of 
Suffolk, in the north of France, who, though he overran 
the whole country almost as far as Paris, was unable to 
bring the French marshal, De la Tremouille, to a decisive 
action, and was forced, as Surrey had been the preceding 
year, to return ingloriously to Calais at the approach of 
winter. 

Bourbon, ignorant of the cardinal’s change of purpose, 
and still clinging to his projects of revenge, renewed his 
proposals to Henry and Charles at the beginning of the 
next year, and with the aid of some Spanish troops laid 
siege to Marseilles, expecting to receive a supply of money 
from England, and also to be assisted by an English inva*- 




HENRY VIII. 


259 


XXVII.] 

sion of Normandy; but the imperial generals were too a.d. 
jealous of him to co-operate with him cordially, and Wolsey 1524 - 
prevented the money from reaching him, and any diversion 
from being made in his favour in the north; so that his 
attempt upon that city failed, and he had to seek his re¬ 
venge elsewhere, which his talents soon rendered complete. 

It does not belong to this history to relate the events of 
the campaign which ensued; it is sufficient to say, that 
at the beginning of the next year Bourbon, at the head 
of the emperor’s army, totally defeated the French under ^* 5 ’ 
the walls of Pavia, and Francis himself became a pri¬ 
soner. 

On the first news of this triumph of his ally, Henry put 
on the appearance of great joy, and caused a public thanks¬ 
giving to be offered up in St. Paul’s, as if for a national 
victory; but in secret he began to negotiate with the captive 
monarch, who saw in an alliance with him the best pros¬ 
pect of speedily obtaining his liberty. Large arrears, on 
account of previous compacts, were due to England, and 
Francis agreed to pay them, with considerable additions, 
and completely won over Wolsey by the promise of pro¬ 
portionally large presents to himself. Henry, in return, 
promised to use his good offices with the emperor to obtain 
the release of Francis, and employed them so energetically, 
that when it was granted, Francis wrote to him, acknow- 152c. 
ledging that he owed his freedom to his exertions. The 
ties which previously existed between Henry and the 
emperor were gradually loosened by the marriage of the 
latter to the princess of Portugal, instead of to Henry’s 
daughter Mary, to whom he had been contracted, but 
who was still only a child; and before the end of the year 
peace between England and France was formally proclaimed 
in London : one of the conditions of which bound Henry to 
use his influence with Charles to obtain, on certain specified 
conditions, the liberation of Francis’s sons, who had been 
surrendered as security for his ransom, and pledged him, 
if he failed in that object, to make war upon Charles in 
concert with Francis. 

The rupture with the emperor was now complete, though 1527. 
the two courts still preserved the outward appearance of 
civility to each other; and Henry’s jealousy of Charles’s 
power was further increased by the events of the spring of 
1527, when the imperial armies stormed Eome and took the 

Q O 

O +4 


260 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cLI. 

a.d. pope himself prisoner. He now desired to change his de- 

1527- fensive alliance with Francis into an offensive one, with the 
express object of curbing the further progress of the empe¬ 
ror’s ambition; and Wolsey went to France to conduct the 
negotiation. Francis received him, as Charles had formerly 
done, with the honours due to a crowned head; came to 
Amiens to meet him, and allowed him to dictate the terms 
of the alliance almost entirely according to his own pleasure. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

HENRY VIII. (CONTINUED). 

1527—Wolsey had now reached the height of his grandeur; but 
1536. circumstances were already in operation which were about 
to produce his fall. 

We stated before that when the marriage between the 
king and Ins brother’s widow was proposed, doubts were 
raised with respect to the lawfulness of such a connexion; 
but the question was carefully considered, those doubts 
were overruled, and the marriage was solemnized with the 
approbation of the council of the kingdom, and of the pope, 
who was then considered the infallible judge in such matters, 
and who granted a dispensation to permit it. It had subsisted 
seventeen years, Catharine had borne Henry several chil¬ 
dren, of whom however only one, the princess Mary, was 
alive ; when he, in search of a new mistress, became ac¬ 
quainted with Anne Boleyn, daughter of sir Thomas Boleyn, 
and granddaughter of the duke of Norfolk. Her virtue, 
proof against the solicitations to which so many had yielded, 
only inflamed his desires, and made him eager for a more 
permanent connexion ; and he saw no means of effecting 
this but in reviving the question about the lawfulness of his 
marriage with the queen. 

Besides his marriage with Catharine there was another 
obstacle to his marriage with Anne, in the fact that she had 
been already contracted to lord Percy ; and in those days 
a precontract, if not formally annulled, was held of as much 
validity as an actual marriage to prevent an union with any 
other person; but, at Henry’s request, Wolsey, by his 





XXVILI.] HENRY VIII. 261 

authority as legate of the pope, pronounced a judicial dis- a.d. 
solution of this obligation ; though his intention in so doing 152 7— 
was only to facilitate her becoming the royal mistress, a step 153 °* 
which his priestly character did not, in his opinion, prevent 
him from sanctioning. He was equally ready to aid his master 
in procuring a divorce from Catharine, chiefly perhaps be¬ 
cause no greater affront could be put upon the emperor, 
her nephew ; but, when he found that Anne was to be put 
in her place, he opposed such a measure with great energy, 
representing a knight’s daughter as wholly beneath him, 
till he found the king’s purpose too firmly fixed to be 
shaken by his arguments or entreaties ; when he withdrew 
his opposition, and endeavoured to efface all recollection of 
it by his subsequent complaisance. But Anne and her family 
had learnt to look upon him as their enemy, and distrusting 
the sincerity of his reconciliation to them, laboured inces¬ 
santly to effect his ruin. 

Having procured the opinions of most of his prelates that 
his union with Catharine was intrinsically unlawful, as being 
prohibited by Scripture, Henry now made formal application 
to the pope for a divorce ; or, to speak more correctly, for a 
sentence pronouncing his marriage invalid; and his applica¬ 
tion placed Clement in a situation of great embarrassment. 

He was at this time a prisoner in the emperor’s hands, who 
was not likely to submit patiently to the infliction of such an 
injury upon his aunt. On the other hand, his best hopes 
of procuring his liberation lay in the exertions which Henry 
might be inclined to make in his favour; and, though in 
December he effected his escape from confinement, yet, as his 
territories were still occupied by the imperial troops, he was 
not much relieved from the necessity of avoiding to offend 
their master. 

At last he was prevailed upon to sign two deeds, one au¬ 
thorizing Wolsey, as his legate, to decide upon the legality 
of the marriage, and the other permitting the king, in the 
event of its dissolution, to marry any person whatever, 
whom he might choose, even though she might be pre¬ 
contracted to another. But he requested urgently that 
no public use should be made of these instruments till 
the imperial troops were removed from his territories. 
Wolsey, however, fancied that some alterations, which had 
been made at Borne in the wording of these instruments, 
indicated an intention, on the part of Clement, to have re- 


A.D. 

1527- 

1530*. 


262 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

course to some evasion to neutralize their effect, and sent 
an envoy, Stephen Gardiner, who afterwards rose to great 
eminence and influence, to procure a third deed, binding 
the pope to ratify whatever decision he should pronounce. 
Gardiner, a man of consummate ability and resolution, though 
at a later period he professed the most ardent zeal for the 
pope, was at present far more solicitous to study the wishes 
of those on whom his preferment depended, and had but 
little pity for Clement’s perplexities, threatening him that, 
if the matter were not done with him, it would be done 
without him, and extorting his consent to the demands 
of which he was the bearer, by the fear that his refusal 
might lose him the whole of his authority in the kingdom. 
It was manifest that a very slight provocation would be 
likely to have this effect; for, as a Roman Catholic historian 6 
remarks, speaking of a period some years before the begin¬ 
ning of Luther’s opposition, the authority of the see of 
Home over the minds, not only of the people in general, but 
also of the clergy, was greatly weakened. And, of course, 
the events of the last few years, during which the papal 
doctrines had been openly denounced, and the pope himself 
taken prisoner and kept in confinement, were not likely 
to have rendered that authority more feared or more re¬ 
spected. 

In order to give the decision anticipated a greater appear¬ 
ance of impartiality than it could have had if it had been 
pronounced by Wolsey alone, another cardinal, Campeggio, 
was with his consent sent as his colleague, and it was be¬ 
lieved that his subservience was secured by the gift of the 
bishopric of Salisbury and by hopes held out to him of 
further preferment in England, though it was afterwards 
found that he had secret instructions to interpose every 
possible delay to the prosecution of the affair, and to avoid 
pronouncing any definite decision till the question had been 
submitted, in all its completeness, to the pope. 

It was in April that their commission was signed, but it 
was October before Campeggio arrived in England, and in 
the mean time events had nearly happened which would have 
rendered Henry indifferent to its progress; for Anne fell ill 
of a singular complaint, called the sweating sickness, which 
was very fatal in England in that age, and nearly became a 


6 Sisruondi, Hist, de France, c. xxxi. 












HENRY VIII. 


263 



victim to its violence. She, however, recovered, but the a.d. 
whole winter was suffered to elapse without any steps 1527- 
being taken ; and it was not till May, 1529, that the two 1536 ' 
cardinals opened their court; the king and queen both 
appeared before them, and Catharine, inspired with an 
unwonted energy and eloquence by the strangeness and 
cruelty of her situation, in a touching speech to her 
heartless husband, appealed to his bygone affection, to his 
honour, and to his truth to do her justice, and refused 
to submit to judges whose minds -were made up before 
investigation, and who were wholly dependent on her in¬ 
terested enemies. 

In less than a month from that time the imperial generals 
in Italy gained a victory over the French that placed the 
whole of that country at their feet, and made it impossible 
for Clement to offend the emperor without the most extreme 
danger ; in fact, on the very day that this victory was gained, 
and before it was known to either party, he had signed a 
treaty of alliance with the emperor; and being now com¬ 
pletely gained over to his views, on the 18th of July he 
revoked his permission to the legates to decide the question, 
and reserved it for his own tribunal at Koine. 

Moisey had no share in this proceeding, and indeed 
was indignant at it, but it proved his ruin. Anne, who re¬ 
collected his original opposition to her marriage, looked 
upon him as the secret cause of the delay, and used all her 
influence to remove him from the king’s councils ; pointing 
out to Henry the general dislike with which he was regarded, 
and the discontent which his arbitrary measures and illegal 
extortions had excited among the people, till at last Henry 
promised that he would never see him again. 

A few days afterwards, on the 17th of October, Moisey 
was deprived of the great seal ; and the attorney-general, by 
the king’s directions, laid an information against him for 
having transgressed the law, by introducing bulls from Kome 
into the kingdom. Those very bulls had been procured, not 
only with the king’s consent, but at his solicitation ; but the 
cardinal’s courage deserted him the moment that he found 
he had lost the royal favour ; he threw himself on the king’s 
mercy, surrendered all his property to him, including his 
town palace, York Place, (which, under the name of Mhite- 
hall, became the chief residence of the sovereign, till it was 
destroyed by fire at the end of the next century,) and re- 



264 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. tired to Esher, to await his further pleasure. Once or twdce 
152 7— Henry relented for a moment, sent him kind messages, and 
153G ‘ condescended to accept his fool Patch as a friendly present; 
but the hopes thus rekindled in his bosom soon passed 
away. When parliament met, a committee was appointed, 
which drew up a long and frivolous indictment against him ; 
hut the charges contained in it, though unanimously agreed 
to by the house of lords, were rejected by the commons, 
owing to the exertions of Thomas Cromwell, who afterwards 
became Henry’s chosen minister ; and who, having been 
originally raised from a low station by the cardinal’s bounty, 
now, with a virtue very rare in that age, showed that he did 
not forget his obligations to his patron. 

Wolsey had now a short respite, and was allowed to retire 
to his diocese of York, which he had never visited all the 
time that he had been archbishop. He recovered his spirits 
in some degree, and, being somewhat humbled by his recent 
mortifications, he behaved with great courtesy and affability 
to all classes, winning golden opinions from all men by the 
judicious energy with which he began to administer the 
affairs of his see. But the news of his popularity reached 
the court, and only increased the industry of his enemies; 
who, by reports well calculated enough to work upon the 
jealous temper of the king, but probably wholly destitute of 
foundation, induced Henry to believe that lie had been 
guilty of secret dealings with the ministers of the pope and 
of the king of Prance, and to sign a warrant to seize him on 
a charge of high treason. 

He was preparing for his installation as archbishop on a 
scale of great magnificence, when the earl of Northumber¬ 
land arrived at York, on the 4th of November, and arrested 
him by the king’s order, and the next day, those who had 
charge of him began to remove him towards London; but 
his strength had wholly given way under this last blow, and 
he became so ill that he could only travel very slowly. On 
the 26th of November he arrived at Leicester Abbey, and 
was unable to proceed farther; on the 29th he died; with 
his last breath recommending himself to Henry’s kindly 
recollection, and giving his hearers the well-known warning 
which has probably often been taken for the invention of 
the poet, but which was, in reality, the genuine expression 
of the dying prelate, prompted by the bitterness of his past 
experience and of his present feelings,— 









XXVIII.] 


HENRY VI1T. 


265 


“ Had I but served my God with lialf the zeal 
I served my king, He would not in my age 
Have left me naked to my enemies.” 



A.D. 


In his career he had displayed the most eminent abilities, 
and many noble qualities, sullied in some degree by failings 
even more conspicuous. He had been an energetic, a crafty, 
and often a successful statesman ; an able and incorruptible 
judge; a munificent patron of learned men, and of merit of 
every kind; a zealous promoter of education; a merciful 
ruler, able to incline even the cruel temper of bis master to 
mercy. On the other band, be was proud, even beyond 
the ordinary degree of human arrogance: his unparalleled 
elevation had turned his head, and he expected that 
it should have the same effect on the rest of the world; 
he was insatiably ambitious, and regulated many of the 
affairs of the kingdom solely with a view to further his 
own objects, or to revenge himself on those whom he sus¬ 
pected of having thwarted them. What is even a more seri¬ 
ous charge against him as an English minister is that he 
endeavoured to subvert the liberties of his country, and to 
make Henry an absolute king by teaching him to govern 
without parliaments, and to violate the Great Charter in its 
most essential article, by imposing taxes on his subjects to 
which they had not consented. This last fault we may allow 
to be in some degree palliated by the consideration that it 
was not without precedent in other reigns, though no other 
king had persevered in so long a course of tyranny as to 
keep the nation seven years without a parliament. His 
other errors we may look upon with indulgence, in considera¬ 
tion of the infirmities of our common nature, which has 
rarely been so severely tried by such unexampled and un¬ 
qualified prosperity ; and we must admit that they were far 
outweighed by his virtues and by the good use which he in 
general made of his power. 

In the mean time Henry had taken other steps to procure 
his separation from the queen. In the autumn of 1529 the 
king being on a journey, slept one night at Waltham Cross, 
and Gardiner, who had now become secretary of state, and 
Eox, the king’s almoner, were lodged in the house of a Mr. 
Cressy, who on the same evening entertained as his guest a 
relation of his wife’s, who was already eminent as one of the 
most learned scholars in the university of Cambridge, 


A.D. 

1527- 

153G. 


266 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Thomas Cranmer. The conversation turned upon the en¬ 
grossing topic of the day, the lawfulness of the king’s mar¬ 
riage, and Cranmer gave his opinion that it was not a ques¬ 
tion that ought to be decided judicially by the pope’s court, 
but simply by the Scriptures; for that the pope had no 
authority to give a decision contrary to the Word of God; 
and that the readiest and surest way to ascertain the sense 
of .the Scriptures was to consult the different universities of 
Europe on the subject. The conversation was reported to 
Henry, who sent for Cranmer, and embracing his suggestion, 
despatched him with other envoys to the most celebrated 
universities in every country to collect their opinions. A 
very large majority agreed that his union Avith his brother’s 
widow, if the previous marriage had been fully consummated, 
was repugnant to the Word of God. And, though it is doubtful 
whether that was the fact, Henry assumed that their judg¬ 
ment authorized the proceedings which in every case he had 
resolved to adopt; and, having procured a more express 
decision to the same effect from the convocations of Canter¬ 
bury and York, he resolved not to wait for the formal abro¬ 
gation of his previous marriage; and in January, 1533, he 
was privately married to Anne Boleyn, whom he had pre¬ 
viously created marchioness of Pembroke. 

Before this event Warham, the primate, died ; and Henry 
resolved to appoint Cranmer to the office, who with the most 
sincere humility sought to avoid the honour, and even pro¬ 
tracted his stay in foreign countries, in the hope that the 
king might be led to fix on some one more willing to under¬ 
take it. But Henry, never willing to be thwarted, over¬ 
came his reluctance, and in the March after the marriage 
he was consecrated at Lambeth; and, with as little delay as 
possible after this ceremony, as judge of the ecclesiastical 
court, he pronounced that the king’s marriage with Catharine 
had been from the beginning invalid, as being opposed to 
the law of God, and that Anne was his only lawful wife. 

The years which had elapsed since the death of 
Wolsey had not passed without some acts on the part of 
the king not a little significant of his future course. One 
of the charges which he had prompted against the cardinal 
was that he had, in obedience to the papal bull, established 
a court of justice as legate; and he now caused the whole 
body of the clergy to be impeached as his accomplices for 




HENRY VIII. 


267 


XXVIII.] 

Laving submitted to the authority so exercised, compelled a.d. 
them to pay as a fine the enormous constitution of nearly ^27— 
120,0007 and also to own him as “ the protector and lo30 ‘ 
supreme head of the Church and clergy of England, in so 
far as is permitted by the law of Christ.” By the first 
clause of this sentence threatening the pope with a re¬ 
nunciation of his allegiance, if he did not show himself 
more compliant; and by the second leaving the door still 
open for a reconciliation with him, if he would be induced 
to gratify him in the matter which he had at heart. 

But though he had not yet made up his mind positively 
to break with him, he proceeded by acts of one unvaried 
tenor to abridge his power in the kingdom, and to extend 
his own, causing the parliament, now summoned for the 
first time for several years, to deprive the pope of the first- 
fruits of bishoprics, to diminish the tax which he had 
hitherto exacted on granting investiture to new prelates, 
and prohibiting all people from paying the slightest regard 
to any censures wdiich the pope might fulminate against 
those who paid obedience to these acts; in short, so unmis¬ 
takable was the object of all the legislation of this period, 
that sir Thomas More, w r ho had succeeded Wolsey as chan¬ 
cellor, and was unshaken in his obedience to the papal 
authority, resigned the seals, because he saw that it wrnuld 
be impossible for him in that situation to reconcile his 
reverence to the pope with his allegiance to his sovereign. 

At the same time Henry began to strengthen himself on 
the Continent in the event of his deciding on a rupture 
with Borne. He sent a large sum to the princes, who 
had formed the league of Smalcalde, to uphold the Be- 
formation in Germany; and he invited Francis to another 
conference, in which he hoped to persuade that monarch 
to join him in renouncing his obedience to the pope, if he 
himself should decide on such a step. They met at Calais 
in October, 1532; and from thence he proceeded to Bou¬ 
logne, to return the visit of Francis in his own territories. 

The French king had no more religion than the English 
one; but still, as he hoped at a future day to recover his 
footing in Italy, he w r ould not promise to break with the 
pope; though fearing above all things a reconciliation 
betw r een Henry and the emperor, he was very willing to 
see the former embroil himself with both pope and em¬ 
peror beyond the possibility of retreat, and strongly urged 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


268 



a.d. him to marry Anne, without waiting for the sanction of the 

| ?^7— holy see. 

loJO. rj^ e tenor 0 f a p Henry’s measures, and the general result 
of his interview with Francis, could hardly have been a 
secret to Clement; but that pontiff was a weak and timid 
man, whose fears sometimes drove him into hastiness ot 
action, but prevented his ever acting with the firmness 
which alone can command respect. And now trusting to 
at least a negative support from Francis, with whose bad 
faith and disregard of all engagements he was well ac¬ 
quainted, but of whose friendship he thought himself secured 
by the marriage lately negotiated between his niece, Ca¬ 
tharine de Medici, and the king’s son, the duke of Orleans, 
afterwards Henry II., he threw down the gauntlet of 
defiance to Henry by issuing a bull, annulling the judg¬ 
ment pronounced by Cranmer on the validity of Henry’s 
first marriage, and threatening him with excommunication, 
if he did not discard Anne, and restore Catharine to her 
matrimonial rights. 

An act of more reckless folly towards a prince of Henry’s 
character can hardly be imagined. It was well known 
that, if it was difficult to lead, it was impossible to drive 
him; and to drive him back from a path on which he had 
advanced so far, was clearly in the highest degree imprac¬ 
ticable. He was rendered furious by Clement’s menace; 
and the minister whom he now trusted most was well 
inclined to take advantage of such a disposition. Cromwell 
was a warm partisan of the doctrines which Luther had 
taught in Germany, and had already urged Henry to follow 
the example of the German princes, and to throw off the 
yoke of Home; and though the king had for a while hesi¬ 
tated, he had lent a not unwilling ear to a project which 
promised to gratify his rapacity, as well as his love of 
arbitrary power; for it was plain that if popery were 
abolished, the papal establishments, the abodes of monks, 
and friars, and nuns, would fall with it; and the superstition 
of past ages had endowed them generally with such vast 
riches, that they offered a tempting prey to the spoiler. 
In many, though far from all such houses, the grossest 
licentiousness had prevailed. The scandalous tales con¬ 
cerning them had been carefully propagated, and no doubt 
greatly exaggerated by their enemies, till the common belief 
was that they were all alike hot-beds of profligacy and 




HENRY VIII. 


269 


XXVIII.] 

debauchery; and a general feeling was thus raised against 
them, which rendered their suppression an easy and a 
popular undertaking. 

Besides being held up as objects of public hatred for 
their dissoluteness, the friars were exposed to public 
ridicule for their impostures. In one place a phial, which 
they declared to contain some drops of the genuine blood 
of our Saviour, was proved to contain nothing but the blood 
of a duck. A miraculous crucifix, the figure on which 
nodded its head, and by the movements of its lips appeared 
to express its approbation whenever offerings of sufficient 
value were made at its shrine, was broken to pieces at 
Paul’s Cross, and the springs by which it was worked were 
exposed to the populace, whose indignation corresponded 
to their past credulity, and who eagerly approved of any 
vengeance that could be taken on those who had so long 
deluded them. 

The detection of these and similar frauds rapidly put an 
end to the worship of the saints and of the Yirgin, which 
had been chiefly founded on them ; but there was one, who, 
as being a popish rather than a Christian saint, had been 
the most especial object of the monks’ devotion, and 
the favourite subject of their exhortations to the people, 
Thomas a Becket; and the adoration paid to his shrine 
at Canterbury had completely effaced the worship of 
God Himself in that city. The offerings made in a year 
at the altar of St. Thomas, as he was called, were some¬ 
times three or four hundred times greater than those 
presented to God and to the Yirgin put together. The 
impiety was monstrous; but there was something ridiculous 
in the steps taken to stop it; for Henry not only pillaged 
his shrine, the riches of which were sufficient to tempt even 
a less watchful rapacity, but caused the deceased prelate 
to be summoned to appear in a court of justice, to answer 
an impeachment for treason. On his non-appearance he 
was found guilty, and condemned; his tomb was rifled, 
his bones burned, the ashes scattered in the air, and his 
name was formally struck out of the calendar. 

The minds of the people were thus well prepared for any 
measures calculated to put a stop to courses so demoralizing 
and degrading; and they had not long to wait. In the 
autumn the parliament met, and at once passed an act, 
abolishing for ever the authority of the pope within the 


A.D. 

1527— 

153G. 



270 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 


[CH. 

v 

a.d. kingdom, and establishing the supremacy of the king over 
1527— the Church, and over all ecclesiastical bodies. Another act 
153G. declared the original invalidity of the king’s marriage with 
Catharine, ratified that with Anne, and settled the suc¬ 
cession of the kingdom on her children. A short time 
afterwards, as it seemed requisite to erect an office for 
the management of ecclesiastical affairs, Cromwell was made 
vicar-general, with precedence over every subject in the 
kingdom, and the right of presiding in convocation as 
superior to the archbishop even in that assembly. Another 
act was passed, giving the king the property of all the 
smaller monastic establishments. Those which possessed 
larger endowments soon shared the same fate ; and a com¬ 
mission was appointed to travel through the kingdom, and 
to investigate the manner in which their members had 
discharged the trust committed to them. Some had been 
so blameless, some so actively useful and praiseworthy, that 
even from commissioners interested to report unfavourably 
of them they extorted praise, but it could avail them 
nothing before a judge determined to condemn them. 
Several hundred monasteries, abbeys, and nunneries were 
suppressed, and their property confiscated. Small pensions 
were given to the expelled members; and the bishoprics 
of AVestminster, Oxford, Gfloucester, Bristol, Peterborough, 
and Chester were erected and endowed with a portion of 
their spoils. The rest of their estates were either ap¬ 
propriated by the sovereign himself, or distributed by him 
among his favourites, or sold at a low rate to the nobles 
and leading gentry of the different counties, who thus 
became pledged by their personal interest to the support 
of the new establishment by which they were so largely 
benefited. This seizure of ecclesiastical property was chiefly 
Cromwell’s work, and few profited by it more than him¬ 
self; but the blows wdiich Cranmer aimed at the papal 
doctrines were prompted by a more disinterested zeal, and 
were more in accordance with his honest desire for the 
truth, and his pious and fervent spirit. AVhen Henry first 
entered the lists against Luther, many of those who favoured 
the reformed doctrines, with a reasonable fear of persecution 
for their opinions, fled to Holland or Germany ; and amongst 
them was a priest, named Tindal, a man of considerable 
learning, who soon afterwards printed at Antwerp a trans¬ 
lation of the Bible, which was not however free from in- 





XXVIII.] HENRY YI1T. 271 

correctness. 'VYarham, the primate, condemned it; but a a.d. 
number of the bishops, intending to second that condemna- 
tion in the most effectual manner, practically counteracted 
it. They bought up all the copies that could be found, and 
burnt them publicly; but the effect of this step was only 
to furnish 'Tindal with the means of publishing a new and 
more correct edition, which, being now revised by Cranmer, 
received the royal sanction; and an order was issued that 
a copy of this Bible should be placed in every parish church 
throughout the kingdom, and that all persons should at all 
times have access to it. 

But the Reformation was not destined to be free from the 
charge of blood. Intolerance was peculiarly the vice of the 
age. It infected equally the adherents of every sect, even 
those who in every other respect displayed the most chari¬ 
table and amiable tempers, the most advanced and enlight¬ 
ened intellect. Men seem to have thought in those days 
that it would have been a proof that they themselves dis¬ 
trusted the soundness of the conclusions at which they had 
arrived, and of the doctrines which they professed, if they 
hesitated to enforce them unshrinkingly, and to visit with 
the most terrible punishments all who denied them. Henry 
was as destitute of religion as a man of considerable ability 
and theological learning well can be; but the holiest priest 
had not more reverence for the will of God than he had for 
his own expressed opinions and asserted authority; and no 
scruples of mercy or humanity were likely to interfere with 
his enforcing compliance with them by the stern methods 
then in fashion. Accordingly, while still in agreement with 
the Church of Borne he had racked and burnt those who 
denied the pope’s supremacy, now that he denied that, he 
proceeded to put to death those who denied his own, and, 
that all men might see that no merits on other grounds could 
atone for such an offence, the first persons whom he selected 
as objects of his vengeance were two of the most virtuous 
and illustrious of all his subjects. 

Fisher, bishop of Rochester, had been one of the most 
trusted counsellors of Henry VII., and had long been greatly 
honoured by Henry himself, who had often boasted, with 
some truth, that no country could produce a more virtuous 
and learned prelate. Sir Thomas More had been Woisey’s 
successor as chancellor, with the unanimous approval of the 
whole kingdom, of the most learned men in Europe, and 


272 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[C'H. 

a.d. even of the fallen cardinal himself, who did himself honour 
1527— by the frankness with which he admitted his competency for 
lo3G. ^.| ie 0 fg ce< bad a ] s0 been, in an especial manner, the 

personal friend of his sovereign, who had often walked with 
him in his garden with his arm round his neck, while in¬ 
structed and delighted with the playful wit for which he was 
almost as celebrated as for his other admirable virtues and 
talents. The virtues of these men were beyond all praise; 
their truth and loyalty beyond all suspicion: but they were 
firm in their attachment to the old religion, and could not 
bring themselves to take an oath admitting Henry’s supre¬ 
macy as head of the Church. Still no law had as yet made 
the refusal of this oath a capital offence. But they had also 
both expressed a doubt whether a woman, named Elizabeth 
Barton, was an impostor, who, professing to have received 
celestial visitations, had pronounced opinions that the mar¬ 
riage with Catharine was valid, and who, with some monks who 
had made a tool of her to support their own views, had been 
lately hanged for treason in speaking disrespectfully of the 
king. And besides the charge of refusing the oath of supre¬ 
macy, a second was brought against them of having been 
accomplices of the Maid of Kent, as she had been called ; 
and a further accusation was made against More, that he 
had induced the king to write his book against Luther, by 
which a weapon had been given to the pope against him, to 
his great dishonour throughout Christendom. The last two 
charges were as ridiculous as the first was illegal. But it 
may be feared that, as More himself thought, their real 
offence was, that they had refused to countenance the king’s 
union with his present queen till the pope had annulled his 
previous marriage, and that they were sacrificed to the vin¬ 
dictive disposition of Anne. When they were brought to 
trial their conviction was sure. No jury could venture so 
to defy the crown as to acquit them ; and, in the summer of 
1535, they were beheaded, to the amazement and indigna¬ 
tion of all Europe, the emperor Charles V. telling the 
English ambassador that, had he been Henry, he would 
rather have lost the best city in his dominions than so wise 
and honest a councillor as More. 

If the queen were really the cause of the death of these 
innocent men, she soon, as More had prophesied, had cause 
to repent her sin in a similar fate. In the September after 
her marriage she had borne the king a daughter, named 



HENRY VIII. 


273 


XXVIII.] 

Elizabeth, whom he, to mark his determination to exclude a.d. 
her sister Mary from the throne, had created princess of 1527— 
"Wales, though she could only be his heiress in the event of 1536, 
his not having a son. Of a son he was eagerly desirous; 
and the queen was again in a state which afforded a prospect 
of the realization of his wishes, when she one day perceived 
Henry caressing one of her maids of honour. Her own ex¬ 
perience told her that his fancy for another was the sure 
forerunner of her own fall. Catharine had lately died, after 
suffering for several years the mortification of seeing another 
installed in her place; and Anne now anticipated a similar 
degradation. The agony of the thought brought on a pre¬ 
mature labour. She presented the king with a dead son, 
and her ruin, if not determined on before, was fixed by that 
event; but even her utmost fears could never have divined 
the fate to which her inhuman husband had destined her. 

In that age far less restraint was put upon the manners 
and conversation of both sexes than is usual now; and Anne 
had been brought up in Erance, where greater licence in 
these particulars was practised than was common in England. 

She was always light-hearted and merry, and, not being 
devoid of personal vanity, had allowed herself to betray gratifi¬ 
cation at the undisguised admiration of many of the courtiers, 
and even to make it the subject of her jests to themselves. 

On no more solid foundation, in the spring of 1586, Henry 
caused her, four of the gentlemen of her suite, and her bro¬ 
ther, lord Eoehford, to be arrested, and accused them all, 
even her brother, of adultery with her. She was tried by a 
jury of peers. The evidence was ridiculous ; but the peers 
proved as servile as the juries that had tried Eisher and 
More, and found her guilty of all the charges brought 
against her. To carry his malice still further, and to render 
her daughter illegitimate, the king then proceeded to have his 
marriage with her declared invalid from the beginning, on the 
ground that she had been precontracted to lord Percy. The 
fact was true, but it was equally true that the precontract 
had been formally annulled by "Wolsey. It was equally 
clear that, if she had not been lawfully married to Henry, 
she could not have been guilty of adultery. But both con¬ 
siderations were made to yield to the cruel will of the king. 
Cranmer, whose only fault was a timorous nature which pre¬ 
vented his at all times adhering with firmness to what he 
knew to be right, was prevailed upon to pronounce her 


274 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. marriage null, as she, in the hopes of appeasing Henry, had 
1527— consented to admit the precontract, and to be silent about 
its subsequent abrogation; and, having then carried both his 
objects, Henry signed the death-warrant of her who had for 
years lain in his bosom, been the object of his endearments, 
and what he called his affections. On the 19th of May, 
within three weeks of her first arrest, she was hurried to 
execution; and her inhuman husband showed the world 
what her real offence had been by marrying Jane Seymour 
the next morning. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

HENRY VIII. (CONTINUED). 

1537— Henry then summoned a parliament, which was as com- 
1539. plaisant as his former one had been, ratifying his divorce 
from Anne, and his marriage with his new queen, declaring 
the issue of both his previous marriages illegitimate, settling 
the throne on whatever children he might have hereafter; 
and, if he should have none, giving him the power of be¬ 
queathing the kingdom to any heir whom he might select. 
His object in procuring this power was supposed to be to 
make a natural son, whom he had created duke of Richmond, 
his successor; but he died soon afterwards, so that that in¬ 
tention, if it had ever existed, was frustrated. 

In the mean time the Reformation which had taken place, 
however acceptable it was to those who could reason calmly 
on the monstrous impostures and pretensions of the Church 
of Rome to which it had put an end, had excited great dis¬ 
content among more than one class of the population. Bad 
as many of the monasteries in some respects were, they had 
had redeeming qualities. They had been, in some degree, 
the refuge for the destitute of every class, the almshouses 
for the poor, the hospitals for the sick, the inns for the 
travellers, sometimes, though' less frequently, the schools 
for the young. Above all they had afforded a provision for 
the younger branches of many a large or decayed familv. 
As such, their demolition was severely felt. The destitute 
condition in which the expelled monks wandered over the 
land, by exciting compassion, increased the prevailing dis- 




HENRY YIIT. 


275 


XXIX.] 

content, which was artfully stimulated by designing men, 
perhaps the emissaries of cardinal Pole, who, though allied 
by blood to the royal house, held his allegiance to the head 
of his Church dearer than that which he owed to the ruler 
of his country; and insurrections broke out in Lincolnshire 
and in the northern counties; becoming so formidable in 
Yorkshire, that the rebels took York, and Hull, and Pom- 
fret Castle. This rising, however, was easily put down by 
the prudence and skill of the duke of Norfolk, and most of 
the leaders were executed; but Henry was more seriously 
disquieted by a conspiracy which the marquis of Exeter, 
and several other nobles in the west, including two brothers 
of the cardinal, had formed against his government: that 
however was betrayed by Geoffrey de la Pole, the younger 
of the brothers. The chief conspirators were all executed; 
and Henry carried his vengeance so far as to compel the 
parliament to pass a bill of attainder against the cardinal’s 
mother, the aged countess of Salisbury, the daughter of the 
duke of Clarence; and two years afterwards he signed the 
warrant for her execution. 

These events only exasperated him the more against all 
who adhered to the pope. Besides Eisher and More, several 
priests of the most unblemished character and of high posi¬ 
tion in the Romish Church had been put to death for re¬ 
fusing to take the oath of supremacy, and, with an unparal¬ 
leled cruelty, had even been denied the consolations of 
religion in their last moments. These persons however 
were hung as traitors; but others, for holding what were 
pronounced heretical opinions on the subject of the real 
presence of Christ in the sacrament, were burnt alive; and, 
the blood which had been shed having only the same effect 
upon the king that it is said to have upon the tiger, of 
increasing his thirst for more, it was determined to frame 
a new enactment so comprehensive that scarcely any one 
could escape. The authority of Cromwell had been gradu¬ 
ally giving way to that of Gardiner, the bishop of Winches¬ 
ter, a man of great laxity of principle, wholly devoid ot 
scruples and of mercy, but of the most refined cunning, and 
also of consummate abilities of a higher class. His theolo¬ 
gical opinions were far more akin to those of Henry than 
Cromwell’s; for, except in the substitution of his own 
supremacy for that of the pope, the king was as firm as ever 
in his preference for the old theology over that of Luther, 


A.D. 

1 537 — 
1533. 


276 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. and he now willingly acted on Gardiner’s advice, and com- 
— pelled the parliament to pass a law, known as that of the 
1 / 539 ’ {Six Articles, (and popularly as the whip with six lashes,) 
by which some of the principal doctrines of the Homan 
Catholic faith, that of transubstantiation, of the denial of 
the cup to the laity, of the necessity of auricular confession, 
of purgatory, of the celibacy of priests, and of the perma¬ 
nent obligation of religious vows, were established as those 
of the Church of England; and those who denied the first 
were to be burnt as heretics, those who hesitated at any 
one of the five last were to be hanged as traitors. The 
iniquity of this law, which, coupled with that establishing 
the king’s supremacy as head of the Church, placed the lives 
of almost the whole nation in danger, (since it was hardly 
possible to find any one who admitted the king’s supremacy, 
and did not deny some of these other doctrines; or any one 
who believed in transubstantiation, without denying the king’s 
supremacy,) roused the opposition of Cranmer, who behaved 
with unusual firmness and intrepidity on this occasion ; and 
for three days maintained an eloquent argument in his place 
in parliament against this sanguinary proposal. Indeed he 
was personally interested, for he himself was married, and as 
such was wdthin reach of its provisions; but his resistance 
was unavailing, and the bill passed; though Henry, on 
whom the archbishop’s honest, single-hearted character had 
left an impression which no one else was ever able to make, 
pardoned his opposition, continued to show him distin¬ 
guished favour, and on more than one occasion protected 
him from this law when his enemies sought to put it in 
operation against him. 

But, before this bill was brought in, Henry chose to give 
a singular proof of the personal interest which he took in 
the theological part of the question, and with singularly bad 
taste entered the lists against one of his own subjects, 
making himself a party in a cause of which he was the 
ultimate judge; and, forgetful of the old proverb that “ a 
king’s face should give grace,” became the actual instru¬ 
ment of condemnation to an unfortunate man, named Lam¬ 
bert. Lambert had been rash enough to express his dissent 
from the Bomish doctrine of transubstantiation, and an in¬ 
formation having been laid against him, he appealed from 
the ecclesiastical tribunals to the king himself. The king, 
eager to display at once his learning and his orthodoxy, 





HENRY VIII. 


277 


XXIX.] 

announced his intention to discuss the matter publicly with 
the prisoner; and on an appointed day appeared in West¬ 
minster Hall, attended by a long train of bishops, addressed 
him with all the hackneyed arguments with which the doc¬ 
trine impugned was commonly supported, and was followed 
by Cranmer, (whose opinions on this important topic under¬ 
went a progressive modification, and who at this period 
seems to have agreed with Luther, and to have adopted his 
theory of consubstantiation,) then by G-ardiner and eight 
more bishops, till Lambert was bewildered by the number of 
his antagonists, and silenced, if not refuted. At last, irri¬ 
tated by the firmness which his logic could not convince, 
nor his authority terrify, Henry brought up the final argu¬ 
ment of all, and with a fierce voice asked his prisoner 
whether he would live or die. The answer was that he could 
not abandon his belief, but that he threw himself on the 
king’s mercy. His was not the first innocence that had 
been disappointed in the result of such an appeal. With his 
own mouth Henry told him that he must die; and Crom¬ 
well, who agreed with him in his sentiments, was compelled, 
as vicar-general, to pronounce the sentence which committed 
him to the flames. 

Cromwell’s own ruin was near at hand. Queen Jane had 
died in October, 1537, a few days after giving birth to a son, 
who was named Edward, and who succeeded his father on 
the throne ; and the king had been constantly thinking of 
supplying her place, without being able to fix on her suc¬ 
cessor. At last, in the autumn of 1539, Cromwell proposed 
to him Anne, the daughter of the duke of Cleves, who was 
believed to be very handsome, and known to be very tall, and 
whose father had great influence among the Lutheran 
princes of Germany. Henry agreed to the marriage, and 
Anne came over to England. But when the king saw her, 
he found her beauty very inferior to his expectations, and 
took so violent a dislike to her, that he could hardly be 
prevailed upon to make her his wife. AYhen he had done 
so, further intimacy did not increase his liking for her; he 
could only speak English, French, and Latin; she could only 
speak Hutch. To crown all, iu the course of the summer of 
1340, he fell in love with Catharine Howard, a niece of the 
duke of Norfolk. The duke, who was warmly attached to 
the old religion, made use of the influence which the king’s 


A.D. 

1537— 

1539. 


278 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CLI. 

a.d. passion for his kinswoman gave him, to ruin Cromwell, 

1539. w ] 10m ] ie hated as the chief support of the new doctrines; 
and Henry, though he had lately created him earl of Essex, 
was easily brought to sacrifice a minister with whom he dif¬ 
fered in opinion on several points of doctrine, though Crom¬ 
well’s too accommodating conscience had allowed him to be 
the instrument of many of his most scandalous actions, and 
even, as we have seen in the case of Lambert, of the perse¬ 
cution of those with whom he agreed in opinion. It was 
impossible to find any pretence on which to found an ac¬ 
cusation against him, so the precedent adopted in the case 
of the countess of Salisbury was followed, and the parliament 
was induced to pass a bill of attainder against him, without 
inquiring into his offence, and he was beheaded on Tower 
Hill, at the end of July. 

In some important points his administration had been 
singularly energetic, wise, and beneficial. He had extended 
the laws of England to Wales, which country had previously 
.been torn to pieces by the anarchy naturally arising from 
the existence of a number of petty and separate jurisdic¬ 
tions. Supported by his authority, lord Grey had put down 
a formidable rebellion in Ireland, which was now, for the first 
time, declared a kingdom instead of a lordship; and had 
made great progress in the pacification of the whole island, 
though that good work was not completed till a year or two 
later; and though Grey himself was involved in Cromwell’s 
ruin, and beheaded on some trivial charges by his thankless 
sovereign. 

1540. At the same time with the proceedings against Cromwell, 
steps were being taken to divorce the king from his wife. 
The grounds for such a bill make the parliament which could 
pass it on such, almost as contemptible as the king. At 
first he urged that Anne had been precontracted to the duke 
of Lorraine; but it w T as proved that the contract had been 
made in her infancy and had afterwards been annulled. He 
then pleaded that he had been deceived in his expectations 
of her beauty, and that when he had married her he had not 
consented inwardly, nor had a matrimonial mind towards 
her. He offered to provide her a pension, and Anne, 
who could hardly have been led by the treatment which she 
had received, to form any great attachment to him and who 
perhaps thought that she had reason to feel thankful that 





1IEN11Y VIII. 


279 


XXIX.] 

he took so pacific a way of getting rid of her, consented to 
the divorce. The act was passed in July, and in August the 
king married the new object of his passion. 

This marriage was even more unfortunate than the last. 
At first Henry was delighted with the beauty and grace of 
his new consort; but after a time it was revealed to him 
that Catharine had not only indulged in dissolute habits be¬ 
fore her marriage, but that she had continued them since. 
The first part of the charge was certainly true; the second 
was probably false ; at all events no proof was attempted to 
be given of it. A bill of attainder had been found a more 
speedy proceeding than a trial; such a bill was brought in 
against her, and in February, 1542, she was beheaded on 
Tower Hill. Several of her relations had been included in 
the bill, on the ground that they had been guilty of mis¬ 
prision of treason in not revealing Catharine’s misconduct; 
but even Henry was ashamed to allow the sentence against 
them to be carried into execution, and they were pardoned. 

The king of Scotland, James V., was Henry’s nephew, 
and Henry had hoped to induce him to adopt the same 
steps concerning religion that he had pursued himself; pro¬ 
posing to him, first to assert his independence of the pope, 
and his own supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. And when 
he found he could not move his ambition, he tried to work 
upon his poverty, (the Scottish revenues were very scanty,) 
and to tempt him to enrich himself by the plunder of the 
religious bodies within his realm. But James was too 
closelv connected with the French court, and too much in- 
fluenced by his queen, a French princess, to be led into 
steps so at variance with his connexions with that kingdom ; 
and evaded meeting his uncle at York, who expected to be 
better able to carry his point in a personal interview than 
by a long negotiation. Henry, provoked at the disappoint¬ 
ment of his hopes, declared war against him, and sent the 
duke of Norfolk to the north to command his army, who at 
first failed to gain any advantage over the Scots, and, after 
making an unimportant inroad, was forced to retreat across 
the border. But the discontent of the Scottish nobles at 
James’s undue preference of his favourite Oliver Sinclair 
to the command of his army, effected for Henry what Nor¬ 
folk was unable to achieve ; when attacked on the Solway by 
a comparatively small body of English troops, they fled; 
and the shame and grief which James felt at their conduct 


A.D. 

1540 


1541 



A.D. 

1541— 

1545. 


280 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

brought on a dangerous illness. His queen was on the 
point of her confinement, and, while he was lying sick upon 
his bed, news was brought him that she was delivered of a 
female child. The disappointment to the king, who had 
been anxiously looking for a son, seemed all that was want¬ 
ing to complete his misery. He exclaimed that the kingdom 
had come into his family through a girl, and would be lost 
to it through a girl; and in a few days he died of a broken 
heart. 

Henry immediately endeavoured to take advantage of his 
death, by a proposal to contract his son Edward to the 
new-born princess, afterwards so celebrated for her mis¬ 
fortunes as Mary, queen of Scots; but, though willingly 
assented to by most of the Scotch nobles, this project was 
defeated; and Henry, full of vexation at his disappoint¬ 
ment, reconciled himself to the emperor, made a league 
with him, and invaded France, without gaining any per¬ 
manent advantage, or any credit by his military operations 
in that country. 

Before his invasion of France he had taken a new wife. 
Immediately after the execution of Catharine Howard an 
act had been passed, declaring that any woman whom the 
king might marry should be held guilty of high treason, if 
she allowed the king to be deceived with respect to her 
previous chastity. The people, in general, ridiculed the 
statute, and said that from henceforth he must marry none 
but widows. Their jest proved true; for the sixth object 
of his choice, Catharine Parr, had been twice married; and 
the partisans of the Reformation were greatly comforted by 
her being inclined to favour their opinions, which, since 
the fall of Cromwell, had been exposed to great discourage¬ 
ment and persecution. In spite of Cranmer’s efforts, the 
translation of the Bible, so lately sanctioned, had been 
subsequently condemned as erroneous, and calculated to 
spread heretical notions. It had been made penal to read 
it in public. The persecution against all such as violated 
any portion of the act of the Six Articles was carried on 
with ceaseless vigour, and with merciless severity; and 
the law was now given a wider sweep than before, so that 
persons might be guilty of heresy without knowing it; 
for, in one new enactment respecting heresy, it was pro¬ 
vided that the king might alter the whole act, or any 
clause of it, at his pleasure; and, in another, every opinion 



HENRY VTII. 


281 


XXIX.] 

was declared to be heretical, which w r as contrary not only 
to the doctrines which the king at present asserted, but to 
any that he might promulgate hereafter. So utterly had 
both houses of parliament lost their former spirit, and so 
absolute was the despotism that the fierce will of Henry 
had succeeded in establishing. 

The w^ars with Trance and Scotland lingered on without 
producing any results of importance. On one side Henry 
took Boulogne; on the other, the Trench fleet rode 
triumphantly down the Channel, attacked the English fleet 
at Spithead, and sunk one of the largest ships in the navy. 
In the north the Scots, aided by a body of Trench troops, 
crossed the eastern, and the English crossed the western 
border of the two countries,. and both armies committed 
great ravages; till, at last, Henry, finding himself deserted 
by the emperor, who had made a separate peace with 
Trancis, was glad also to desist from the war. Scotland 
was included in the treaty, and peace was restored; but 
the w r ar had been very expensive; and, to prop the em¬ 
barrassed revenue, Henry adulterated the coinage to such 
an extent, that he reduced it to half its value. Such a 
measure was as impolitic, as it was dishonest. It caused 
great distress at home, and great embarrassment to all 
mercantile transactions abroad, so that his successor was 
obliged to withdraw the money of his latter years from 
circulation. 

The uncontrolled power which the parliament had given 
Henry to regulate the religion of the kingdom produced 
its natural effect upon so capricious and domineering a 
temper by rendering his conduct more inconsistent than 
ever. At one time the adherents of the pope fancied 
themselves sufficiently in favour to attack Cranmer, and 
the lords of the council, before whom informations were laid 
against him, kept him waiting for hours at the door of 
their chamber among the servants and common people, and, 
when he was admitted, threatened to send him to the 
Tower, till he produced a ring, which the king had given 
him as a pledge of his favour, and appealed to Henry him¬ 
self, who, on the matter being referred to him, reprimanded 
the accusers and the council in the severest terms, and 
pronounced the archbishop the most honest and loyal of all 
his subjects. At another time the partisans of the re¬ 
formers had influence enough to bring about the disgrace 


A.D. 

1541 — 
1545. 


1546. 


282 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


|~CH. 

a.d. of Gardiner, and to procure the erasure of his name as one 

1540. 0 f hi s executors, and of the future council of regency from 
the king’s will. 

But still the religious persecution continued with un¬ 
abated severity. Even women were burnt for denying 
transubstantiation, and among them a lady, named Anne 
Askew, who had some connexion with the queen herself; 
and even Catharine was at one time in danger; for, w r hen 
in conversation with Henry she expressed opinions not quite 
in harmony with his, he showed so much displeasure, that 
the chancellor Wriothesley, a man of a temper almost as 
fierce as his master, obtained leave to draw up an impeach¬ 
ment against her, and procured Henry’s signature to the 
document and his order to arrest her the next day. There 
seemed every probability of a third tragedy on Tower 
Hill, when fortunately Catharine received notice of her 
danger; and on the next opportunity she renewed the 
conversation, professing occasionally to suggest doubts, 
which in reality she did not feel, for the purpose of being 
instructed by the learning with which the king solved 
them, and explained the difficulties which were too great 
for her unassisted intellect. This timely flattery saved her; 
and when Wriothesley, in accordance with the king’s com¬ 
mands, came to arrest her, he was astonished at finding her 
in friendly conversation with the king, and at being himself 
received by Henry with the appellations of “fool,” “ knave,” 
and “beast,” and a peremptory order to depart from his 
presence. 

But the time was at hand when he himself was to be 
summoned before his Judge. He was not an old man ; 
but, always corpulent, he had of late become so unwieldy 
as to be unable to be moved about his palace without the 
aid of machines; and, as soon as he was deprived of his 
usual exercise, his health began to break visibly. His ill¬ 
ness did not improve his temper; and the last months of 
his reign were sullied by one of his most disgraceful acts 
of tyranny. There was no nobleman in the kingdom who 
had done him equal service with the duke of Norfolk. At 
the beginning of his reign he had won for him the victory 
of Flodden, and he had on all occasions borne his part 
with the greatest success and honour in wars abroad, and 
at the council-board at home. His son, the earl of Surrey, 
was more than worthy of such a father. Brave and clii- 





HENRY YIH. 


283 


XXIX.] 

valrous as lie, he also united the fire of the poet to the ac¬ 
complishments of the courtier, and was celebrated throughout 
Europe for the genius and spirit with which he upheld the 
fame of his mistress with both lyre and lance; but these 
men, the first subjects in the land, were to die. Their 
exact offence is unknown; in fact, they had committed 
none; but they had probably excited the jealousy of the 
Seymours, the uncles of the young prince Edward, the 
lieir to the throne, who, looking forward to the regency, 
were eager to remove those, who, from the general esteem 
in which they were held, might be expected to prove their 
most formidable competitors. 

Surrey, being a commoner, was tried before a jury. The 
chief accusation made against him was, that he had borne 
on his shield the arms of Edward the Confessor, which was 
a sign that he aspired to the throne. He proved that 
these arms had been formally assigned him by the College 
of Heralds; and, even if he had assumed them without 
authority, there was no law which made such an act criminal, 
much less treasonable. How r ever, he was convicted and 
executed on the 19th of January, 1547. 

Luckily, as his father was a peer, the proceediugs in his 
case could not be so rapid; and, as no charge could be 
brought against him, except that he had stated that the 
king was ill, and not likely to last long, which had pro¬ 
bably been said by every person in the kingdom, it was 
resolved to proceed against him by a bill of attainder. 
Throughout this sad reign no jury and no parliament 
showed the slightest hesitation at shedding innocent blood; 
and the attainder was passed through both houses, without 
debate. The 29th of January was appointed for Norfolk’s 
death; but, when the scaffold was preparing, news came to 
the lieutenant of the Tower that the king had died in the 
night; and the lieutenant, on his own authority, suspended 
the execution. 

Henry was fifty-four years old, and had reigned nearly 
thirty-eight years. Before his death he made a will, in 
accordance with the power which had been given him by 
parliament, leaving the crown first to his son, then to the 
princesses Mary and Elizabeth in succession, and then to 
the children of his younger sister, Mary, duchess of Suf¬ 
folk, to the exclusion of the posterity of his elder sister, 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


284 



a.i>. the queen of Scotland. In this particular the will was 
1^47. afterwards set aside. 

Owing to some singular laws which were passed in this 
reign, we are better able than at most times to estimate 
the condition of the poor during this period. Legislation 
tried, as it has done since, to fix the price of food, or at 
least to confine its variations within certain bounds ; and 
we find that the average price of wheat was taken at six 
shillings and eightpence a quarter. When it was cheaper, 
merchants were allowed to export it, in order to keep the 
price up to that point, for the encouragement of the grower; 
when it was dearer, it might be imported from foreign 
countries, in order to keep it down to that price, for the 
necessities of the consumer. Beef and pork were to be 
sold for a halfpenny a pound, mutton for three farthings ; 
but, in point of fact, these meats, when bought in larger 
quantities than a single pound, were usually to be pro¬ 
cured at a much lower rate. The highest price for the 
strongest beer was fixed at a penny, for the most costly 
wines at a shilling a gallon. A penny, therefore, would 
then procure as large a quantity of the necessaries of life 
as a shilling will now; and as wages were also fixed by law, 
according to which the most ordinary labourers received 
threepence-halfpenny a day, it is clear that the working 
classes were in a much better condition than they are at 
present. I 11 the time of Elizabeth the rate of wages was 
altered, and they were regulated on a kind of sliding scale 
by the price of food. 

The lawmakers, however, did not limit their interference 
to such matters as these, but carried it to a degree that, to 
our present notions, seems as intolerable as it was unwise. 
In those days no man might fancy that he could do as he 
liked with bis own. The great landowners found the size 
of the farms which they might let defined by strict pro¬ 
visions. The tenants were sometimes taught, by the same 
authority, how their land was to be cropped. If manufac¬ 
turers were compelled to sell their wares at what were 
adjudged to be reasonable prices, their customers were some¬ 
times compelled to buy what they did not want, for their en¬ 
couragement. Sumptuary laws regulated, not only the 
apparel which a man might wear, but the food which he 
might eat; and the greatest nobles in the land submitted to 



XXIX.] HENRY VIII. 285 

an enactment, by which their dinners were curtailed to two a.d. 
courses, of two kinds of meat only, and those without sauce. 1547. 

The pastimes of the people had begun to change, and 
vigorous efforts were made to bring them back into the old 
course. The young nobles had begun to w'eary of the tilt- 
yard, and to addict themselves to dice, and cards, and dances ; 
and the yeomen, following their example, had deserted 
the archery ground for the bowling-green. The nobles 
Henry tried to reform by his own example, delighting, as he 
did, in athletic games and in the jousts, in which he greatly 
excelled ; and for the lower classes he re-enacted the statute 
of Winchester, as it was called, passed in the time of the first 
Edward, which, among other clauses, enjoined that every 
man under sixty years of age should furnish himself with a 
bow and arrows, and practise shooting; that even children of 
seven years old should have weapons suited to their strength, 
and should begin to learn the art by which their forefathers 
had won such glory for England. At the same time, to 
check the tendency to idleness, which the example of their 
superiors seems to have increased among the lower classes, 
the most severe laws were enacted against able-bodied 
beggars; and those who had been convicted three times of 
such an act of vagrancy were liable to be hanged. 

Henry himself it is not very easy to appreciate correctly; 
and the great event of his reign, the breach with Borne, 
contributes to the difficulty, as much as the inconsistency of 
his character. The followers of the reformed religion (though 
nothing can be more absurd than to look upon Henry as a 
supporter of their doctrines) extolled him as the discarder 
of the papal supremacy. The adherents of the pope vilified 
him on the same ground. And even in the present century 
histories of his reign have been written, on both sides, in a 
spirit for which nothing but such a bias seems sufficient to 
account. As to his conduct in that respect it seems plain 
that he separated very unwillingly from the pope; that, 
though not much under the influence of religion in his con¬ 
duct, as a theologian he was attached to the doctrines of the 
Church of Borne ; but, as a proud, violent, and arbitrary 
king, he was far more devoted to his own will, and to the 
maintenance of his own unquestioned authority. He was in 
many respects a clever and accomplished prince, of great 
courage and great personal skill in the use of arms, though 
the victory of Guinegatte proved him to be utterly destitute 


286 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. of military talent. ITe had greater political ability, though 

1547. } ie can hardly be called a successful statesman, his acuteness 
in perceiving what was desirable not being equalled by his 
steadiness or temper in carrying out his views. In his 
manners, especially in the early part of his reign, he was 
courteous, generous, and affable; and, so engaging are these 
qualities, and even the recollection of them, that to the end 
of his life he was popular with the generality of the nation. 

As a king he deserves little respect from a lover of free¬ 
dom. He trampled on the liberties of his people, ruled for 
many years without a parliament, in defiance of the express 
provisions of the Great Charter of the land, and in every 
respect endeavoured to establish an absolute tyranny, not 
only over the actions, but even over the minds of his subjects. 
But the great, the ineffaceable stain upon his memory is the 
ruthless manner in which he shed blood, and the blood which 
should have been dearest to him, for the gratification of his 
most trifling caprices. No tyrant of modern history has 
approached him in this respect. Others have ruthlessly 
cleared from their path those who stood in the way of their 
projects, or those alone by whose discontent or ambition 
they have fancied themselves endangered ; but Henry alone 
sent to the scaffold the wives who had lain upon his bosom, 
the friends with whom he had walked and jested, the minis¬ 
ters who had served him faithfully, because they interfered 
with a passing fancy, a sudden caprice, or had awakened a 
groundless jealousy. These acts, proving him incapable of 
love or friendship or gratitude, have rendered his name a 
byword among the nations; and if those ardent and noble 
spirits have been right who have thought honourable renown 
and the affectionate, respectful remembrance of posterity a 
worth} r and sufficient meed for gallant actions, and lives of 
virtue and usefulness, Henry, on the contrary, in the general 
detestation with which his memory is regarded, may be 
thought, in some degree, to be still undergoing a fitting ex¬ 
piation for his manifold atrocities. 



XXX.] 


EDWARD VI. 


287 


CHAPTER XXX. 


Emperor. 
Charles V. 

Scotland. 

Mary. 


EDWARD TI. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 

A.D. 


France. 

Francis I. 

Henry II. . . 1547 

Spain. 

Charles V. 


Popes. A.D. 
Paul III. 

Julius III. . . 1549 


Edward VI., being blit nine years old at his father’s death, 
was of course incapable of undertaking the cares of govern¬ 
ment ; and Henry had been empowered by the parliament 
to name a regent or council of regency during his minority. 
He had, in consequence, appointed sixteen executors of his 
will, who should act as the young king’s council till he 
arrived at the age of eighteen, of whom the most important 
members were the earl of Hertford, a brother of his queen, 
Jane Seymour, and, as such, uncle to Edward; Cranmer, the 
primate ; Wriothesley, the chancellor; and lord Lisle, the high 
admiral. But Hertford soon contrived to engross the chief 
power to himself, and, gratifying the most discontented of 
his colleagues with peerages or promotions, and grants of 
estates out of the lands which had belonged to the suppressed 
monasteries, he procured their consent to his assuming the 
title of Protector of the kingdom, and Guardian of the king’s 
person. He himself w r as created duke of Somerset; 
Wriothesley w r as made earl of Southampton ; and Lisle, earl 
of Warwick. Sir Thomas Seymour, another of the king’s 
uncles, who had not been named one of Henry’s executors, 
but who formed one of a second council, appointed to aid 
the others in cases of difficulty, was made lord Seymour; 
and, as he was still discontented, and formidable from his 
abilities and ambition, Warwick resigned his office of admiral 
in his favour. 

Somerset was favourable to the Reformation, and South¬ 
ampton was firmly opposed to it. He had also, as long as 
it w r as in his power, resisted the protector’s elevation above 
his colleagues; and, though he had at last acquiesced in it, 
he was likely to avail himself of every opportunity to renew 
his opposition. On both these accounts Somerset deter¬ 
mined to get rid of him, and, as he was not so much a 


A.D. 

1547. 




288 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. lawyer as a politician, the illegal manner in which he en- 

1547. trusted his duties as chancellor to deputies soon afforded a 
pretext for doing so. The case was so strong against him, 
that he was glad to compound for his safety by relinquishing 
his office and his seat in the council; and Somerset, thus 
left without a rival, was in effect the absolute governor of 
the kingdom. 

He began at once to turn his attention towards Scotland, 
where religious differences were causing disturbances greater 
even than those to which they had given rise in England. 
The reformers, exasperated at the burning of George Wis- 
hart, had murdered cardinal Beaton, who had condemned 
him; and the cause of the murderers had been openly sup¬ 
ported by John Knox, the great preacher of the new reli¬ 
gion in that kingdom. The whole nation was divided into 
two parties, but the chief nobles, and the queen dowager, a 
Erench princess of the house of Guise, adhered to the old 
religion. Somerset was above all things desirous to accom¬ 
plish the plan which had been proposed by Henry, of marry¬ 
ing the young king to the equally youthful queen of Scot¬ 
land. The Protestant party in Scotland were as eager for it 
as himself, but for that very reason it was distasteful to the 
nobles, and to the earl of Arran, the governor of the 
kingdom; and Somerset took the ill-judged step of endea¬ 
vouring to compel, instead of to conciliate, their assent, and 
invaded Scotland with a large army. This violent measure 
roused the national feeling, ever too much inclined to war 
with England. Even those who were favourable to the 
match, avowed that they did not like so rough a wooing, and 
Arran was able to raise a large force to repel the invasion. 
The two armies met near a hill called Pinkey, a few miles 
from Edinburgh, and the Scots were totally defeated. But 
the protector, instead of prosecuting his victory in person, 
returned to England to conduct the important affairs which 
required his presence at home, and left Warwick to con¬ 
tinue the w r ar, and to negotiate for peace. But the Scotch, 
though they lost several important towns, protracted their 
resistance till important succours arrived from Erance, under 
protection of which a parliament, held at Haddington, decided 
that the young queen should be sent to Erance, to be be¬ 
trothed to the dauphin, the son of Henry II., for Francis 
had died soon after Henry; and in July, 1518, she was con¬ 
veyed in safety to Paris; and thus, all hopes of the union of 




EDWARD VI. 


289 


XXX.] 

the two kingdoms by the marriage of their sovereigns were 
terminated. 

The object for which Somerset had been anxious to return 
to England was the advancement of the Reformation ; but, 
before he applied himself to that, he thought it well to con¬ 
ciliate general favour towards his administration, by the re¬ 
peal of the severe laws extending to the crime of treason which 
had been passed in the late reign, and of the statute of the 
Six Articles; most of the laws against heresy were also re¬ 
pealed ; so that though it was still a crime punishable by 
the state, it was not so easy as formerly to involve persons 
in such an accusation. After these preliminary steps he pro¬ 
ceeded zealously but cautiously in the object which he had 
at heart, acting chiefly under the advice of Cranmer, who 
to vast theological learning and sincere piety added the 
most amiable moderation, and the most steady judgment. 
By his advice, the orders issued for the establishment of the 
reformed worship were accompanied by the publication of 
books well calculated to recommend that worship to the 
minds of the people: of Erasmus’s Paraphrase of the New 
Testament, of the book of Homilies, and of the Catechism, 
which, with slight additions, has come down to our times, 
and is still enjoined by our Church, and reverently used by 
every parent as the best medium of instruction for the 
youthful Christian. 

The new system was received with very general acquies¬ 
cence : and of those who opposed it no one was at first 
treated with any severity except Gardiner, bishop of Win¬ 
chester, who was thrown into prison, and detained a long 
time in close confinement without any specific charge being 
brought against him; but as, though he was a man of con¬ 
summate talents, he was neither liked nor respected, and, as 
the spirit which in times past would have looked not at the 
injustice done to one individual, but to the injury inflicted 
in his person on the general liberty and rights of the whole 
nation, had become completely dormant under the arbitrary 
rule of the two last sovereigns, his case excited no notice or 
discontent. 

Ear greater was the disapprobation with which people 
saw the conduct of the protector to his brother, the admiral. 
Lord Seymour w r as naturally ambitious, and this feeling was 
aggravated by envy at the superior power of his brother, 
whom he felt to be his inferior in ability. To appease him, 

u 


A.D. 

1547. 


1548. 


290 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. he had been gratified with rank and office, and very large 

J548. g rau t s 0 f estates in no less than eighteen different counties. 
But he aimed at more substantial power, and as his first step 
towards its acquisition, he solicited and obtained the hand of 
the queen dowager; and when she died in childbed, in 
September, he aspired to a union with the princess Eliza¬ 
beth, who according to some accounts was not averse to his 
proposals. Somerset was seriously alarmed for the main¬ 
tenance of his own power, and Warwick encouraged his 
suspicions of his brother’s ultimate designs. 

1549. "Warwick was the son of Dudley, the infamous minister 
of Henry VII.; and, having been relieved by the late king 
from the effects of the bill of attainder passed against his 
father, showed such eminent abilities as rapidly recom¬ 
mended him to the favour of Henry, who created him lord 
Lisle, and employed him in many important affairs; but he 
was ambitious and thoroughly unprincipled, and now fo¬ 
mented the ill feeling which he perceived to exist between 
the two Seymours, hoping to undo them both, and to rise 
by their fall. Somerset’s jealousy was at first aggravated, if 
not inspired, by his duchess, w r ho was indignant at having 
to yield precedence to the wife of his younger brother, who 
of course retained her rank as queen dowager. It is impos¬ 
sible to decide on the truth of the charges on which the 
admiral was impeached. His language had certainly been 
imprudent, and witnesses w r ere produced, men undoubtedly 
guilty of great crimes themselves, who swore that his 
designs had been treasonable. It was in vain that he 
claimed a public trial, and demanded to be confronted with 
the witnesses against him: a bill of attainder was passed 
against him, and Somerset brought himself to sign the war¬ 
rant for his execution. 

In the mean time there was considerable discontent in 
many parts of the kingdom. The monks had been remark¬ 
ably easy landlords, being contented with rents which were 
not a fifth, and sometimes not a tenth of the value of their 
estates, and the distribution of their lands among new 
masters, who dealt more rigorously with their tenants, at first 
produced great distress, which was aggravated by the adul¬ 
teration of the coinage which had been carried out towards 
the end of the last reign; and insurrections broke out in 
nearly all the southern and midland counties, which for a 
while threatened dangerous consequences. In Norfolk the 






EDWARD VI. 


291 


XXX.] 

insurgents were so strong, that, under the guidance of Ket, a.d. 
a tanner, they gave battle to lord Northampton, and defeated 
him, and the protector was forced to send for lord Warwick 
and 6000 men, from the army raised for the Scotch war, 
before they could be put down. 

The war with Scotland still lingered on, and, though no 
decisive battles took place, the general result was unfavour¬ 
able to the English, who were forced gradually to abandon 
most of the strong places of which they had made them¬ 
selves masters; while at the same time the king of France 
attacked the English possessions in that country, and re¬ 
duced some fortresses, though he was unable to take 
Boulogne, which however was, by treaty, to be restored in 
the year 1554. These events made Somerset very unpo¬ 
pular, and his personal conduct was in many respects calcu¬ 
lated to increase the disfavour with which he was regarded. 

The nobles, whom he treated with great haughtiness, envied 
him the rapid acquisition of his high rank and great estate; 
and the people in general were indignant at the sight of the 
splendid palace which he was building in the Strand, and at 
his pulling down the churches in the neighbourhood to 
supply materials for that edifice. Warwick had been wait¬ 
ing patiently for such a feeling, which he had foreseen would 
arise, and was prepared to take advantage of it as soon as it 
had acquired sufficient strength. The council of regency, 
who had been completely superseded in their functions by 
the protector, gladly joined in the attempt to overthrow 
him; by public proclamation they denounced him to the 
people; in an address to Edward himself they enlarged 
upon the unconstitutional manner in which he had engrossed 
the whole power of the kingdom, upon his unnatural cruelty 
to his own brother, and upon the odium which his conduct 
had brought upon the king’s government; and procured 
the royal sanction for his removal from his office, and for 
his committal to the Tower. His imprisonment was not 
long, and, as the affection which the king still entertained 
for him deterred his enemies from proposing more rigorous 
measures against him, they were contented with imposing 
an enormous fine upon him, and then allowed him to re¬ 
cover his freedom. The supreme authority was now in 
Warwick’s hands, and he willingly made peace with France 
and Scotland, though he had resisted such a step when it 
had been proposed by Somerset a few months before. 


A.D. 

1550— 

1551. 


1553. 


292 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

The fall of Somerset did not, however, retard the progress 
of the Reformation; on the contrary, as the king himself, 
as he advanced in years and became better able to under¬ 
stand the matters in dispute, showed a very decided and 
firm attachment to its principles, it proceeded more vigor¬ 
ously than ever. Gardiner, and Bonner, bishop of London, 
were deprived of their sees, as also were Heath and Hay, the 
bishops of Worcester and Chichester, men of great vir¬ 
tue, learning, and moderation: the permission which had 
been granted to the princess Mary, to have the mass cele¬ 
brated in her private chapel, was withdrawn, avowedly in 
consequence of the personal scruples of the king; and, the 
pernicious principle of intolerance at last asserting its influ¬ 
ence even over the gentle disposition of Cranmer, two 
unhappy convicts were committed to the flames, not indeed 
for the assertion of any of the papal doctrines, but for 
heretical opinions affecting the very foundations of Chris¬ 
tianity. At /the same time, that no means of instructing 
the nation in religious truth might be omitted, some of the 
most distinguished foreign reformers were invited to Eng¬ 
land, and received preferment or appointments in the uni¬ 
versities. Peter Martyr became divinity professor at Ox¬ 
ford ; Bucer at Cambridge; and, on his death, that office was 
kept vacant for a considerable time, in the hope that Me- 
lancthon himself would come over and occupy it. 

Aided by their piety and learning, Cranmer undertook 
the composition of a set of articles which should speak 
with authority the sentiments of the Church, and secure 
uniformity among its preachers. It would occupy too much 
of our space to record the principal matters contained in 
them, or the points of difference between them and the 
present articles of our Church, as they were finally settled 
in the reign of Elizabeth. It is sufficient here to state that 
they displayed in an admirable degree not only the learning 
of Cranmer, and of Ridley, who had succeeded Bonner in 
the see of London, but their moderate tempers and com¬ 
prehensive wisdom, being framed so as to allow as wide a 
latitude for differences of opinion as was compatible with 
the maintenance of the great cardinal doctrines of sound 
Christianity; and this disposition of theirs was the more 
admirable, because there was, at the same time, a party 
arising of a much more rigid mould, whose hatred of popery 
extended itself to its most innocent forms, and most useful 


EDWARD VI. 


293 


XXX.] 

establishments, and which, when fully developed, grew into 
the great puritan faction, which for a while overturned both 
Church and state. The most prominent member of the 
party at this moment was Hooper, who, when the bishopric 
of Gloucester was offered to him, hesitated long before he 
could be prevailed upon to accept it, because he had scruples 
about the episcopal robes, which he had learned during a 
residence in Switzerland to think unlawful, as a relic of 
popery. 

Fresh dissensions broke out between Warwick, who had 
lately been created duke of Northumberland, and Somerset, 
who had gradually been restored to favour, though not to 
power, and who was so elated at the evident good will 
with which his royal nephew regarded him, as to meditate 
bringing about a marriage between him and one of his 
own daughters. Northumberland had entertained a design 
of marrying the king to a French princess, and had set on 
foot a negotiation for that purpose with the French court, 
which willingly acceded to his proposals; and being 
thoroughly alarmed lest the suggestions of Somerset should 
defeat his views, he determined to complete his destruction. 
Towards the end of 1551 the duke and several of his 
principal partisans were suddenly arrested; and he was im¬ 
peached before the peers on two separate charges. Of a 
project to raise an insurrection, he was acquitted; but of 
an intention to procure the murder of Northumberland, he 
was convicted, in spite of his most solemn denial and a com¬ 
plete absence of proof. He himself admitted that he had 
entertained the idea of seizing him, and putting him under 
constraint for a time; but even that design, he asserted, 
he had subsequently abandoned. The young king was per¬ 
suaded to consent to his death, and he was beheaded at the 
beginning of the next year. 

The power of Northumberland was now more absolute 
than ever; but the visibly decaying health of Edward 
threatened it with an early termination; and he applied 
himself to obviate the personal disappointment which he 
might expect from his death. Edward’a attachment to the 
reformed religion disposed him to view, with great re¬ 
luctance, the prospect of his sister Mary’s succession to the 
throne ; and Northumberland had the address to induce him 
to make a settlement of the kingdom; passing over not only 
Mary, but Elizabeth also, as having been pronounced illegi- 


A.D. 

1553. 


294 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. timate by an act of parliament which had never been re- 

1553. pealed, and bequeathing the crown to lady Jane Grey, the 
daughter of the duke of Suffolk, and granddaughter of Mary, 
the sister of Henry VIII. Her mother was still alive, and 
had, of course, a title superior to that of her daughter, but 
she was willing to waive it, and to give Jane in marriage to 
lord Guildford Dudley, Northumberland’s fourth son. The 
lawyers who were consulted were unwilling to draw the 
requisite deed, which they pronounced not only illegal, 
but treasonable; but they were overruled by Edward him¬ 
self, who showed the greatest possible earnestness in the 
matter, giving them his orders in person, and issuing a 
formal commission to them to authorize their compliance; 
and it was at last drawn and signed, not only by the king, 
but by the lords of the council of regency, who took an oath 
to aid in carrying it into effect. Cranmer long refused to 
add his signature, but his scruples yielded at last to the 
personal importunity of Edward himself; and his consent 
was remembered against him at a later day, when the re¬ 
collection of it had perhaps no small share in producing his 
destruction. 

The king’s health grew worse and worse: at last, when 
the skill of the regular physicians seemed unavailing, 
Northumberland called in a female quack, who undertook 
to ensure his recovery, and soon rendered it perfectly hope¬ 
less, if it was not so before. On the 6th of July, 1*553, he 
died, to the great grief of the nation, who saw in the early 
virtues and eminent abilities, of which he had already given 
ample promise, the fairest prospect of a long enjoyment of 
tranquillity and prosperity. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


MARY. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Charles V. 

Ferdinand . . 1558 

Scotland. 

Mary. 


France. a.d. 
Henry II. 

Spain. 

Charles V. 

Philip II. . .1555 


Popes. A.D. 
Julius III. 

Marcellus II. . 1555 
Paul IV. . . . 1556 


1553. Northumberland and the council at first concealed the 
news of Edward’s death, hoping to get Mary into their hands 





MARY. 


295 


XXXI.] 

before it reached her. But she obtained certain intelligence a.d. 
of the fact while on her way to visit her dying brother, 1553 - 
from whom she had received a fictitious summons to his 
deathbed; and, at once retracing her steps and retiring 
into Norfolk, she displayed a courage and firmness that soon 
disconcerted the plans of the conspirators against her. She 
wrote a letter to the council, requiring them to proclaim her 
as queen: to which they replied by a letter challenging her 
legitimacy, and enjoining her to pay a cheerful obedience to 
Jane, whom her brother had appointed his successor; and 
also by a formal proclamation of Jane in the streets of Lon¬ 
don ; but the people in general, who were scarcely acquainted 
with her name, received their proclamation with an ominous 
silence. Several nobles of great influence rapidly joined 
Mary, and in a few days she found herself sufficiently strong 
to advance towards London. Northumberland in vain en¬ 
deavoured to oppose her progress. He was arrested and 
committed to the Tower, and Mary was formally pro¬ 
claimed queen, amid the acclamations of the people, only ten 
days after the performance of the same ceremony in honour 
of Jane. 

Jane had been most reluctant to assume the dignity 
forced upon her so unexpectedly, and had only yielded to 
the compulsion of her parents. She now, with the greatest 
willingness, laid it down, hoping in her return to private 
life to return also to the religious exercises and literary 
studies which had previously been the chief occupation 
of her exemplary life. She and her husband, however, with 
her father, the duke of Suffolk, were arrested and imprisoned 
in the Tower till the queen’s decision could be taken as to 
their treatment. 

In the punishment of those who had conspired against 
her Mary was unusually moderate. Not only were Jane 
and her husband spared, but even the duke of Suffolk, her 
father, was released after a few days’ imprisonment, and 
Northumberland himself and two of his associates were the 
only persons executed. 

The parliament was summoned to meet in October, and, 
before its assembling, a division arose among her councillors 
as to whether the queen should retain the title of the 
Supreme Head of the Church in her kingdom. Cardinal 
Pole, who had been appointed the papal legate as soon as the 
news of her accession reached Borne, pointed out to her that 


296 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. the question of her own legitimacy depended solely on the 

1553. r ight of the pope to the supremacy which her father had 
claimed. But Gardiner, looking at the question in a poli¬ 
tical light, though averse to any change of doctrine, w 7 as 
desirous to shake off all dependence on the pope, and, judg¬ 
ing that such a line of conduct would be acceptable to the 
nation in general, persuaded her to disregard the apparent 
inconsistency, and to maintain the title appropriated by 
Henry. Still this decision did not prevent the instant re¬ 
establishment of the old religion in every other particular. 
The deprived bishops were restored, several of those most 
favourable to the Reformation imprisoned, and all the acts 
of Edward relating to religion were repealed. A great portion 
of the nation acquiesced not unwillingly in the change. 
The purer doctrines of the reformed religion had not as yet 
had time to take a deep hold of the feelings of the people; 
and many, no doubt, were conciliated by the denial of the 
papal' supremacy, which appeared to statesmen the most 
important matter in dispute between the two sects. Even the 

1554. princess Elizabeth was persuaded or compelled to return to 
the old forms, and gratified the emperor, who took great 
interest in the matter, by requesting him to send her a cross 
and the vessels necessary for the worship of the mass in her 
private chapel. 

The next matter to be decided on was the marriage of the 
queen. She was determined to marry at once, in the hope 
of having children, wdiom she might bring up in the firm 
resolution of maintaining the Roman Catholic religion ; and 
there w r ere several candidates for her hand. Gardiner ex¬ 
erted all his influence in favour of Courteney, earl of Devon- 

_ & / 

shire, a descendant of the house of York, young and hand¬ 
some, but weak and dissolute. Mary, however, fixed on her 
cousin Philip, son of Charles V., already sovereign of the 
Low Countries, and heir of Spain, and of the great acquisi¬ 
tions which that country had lately made in the New World. 
The match had been proposed during the lifetime of the late 
king ; it was now 7 rapidly settled, and the prince w 7 as invited to 
England for its celebration. 

Eoreign nations, and especially Erance, regarded this con¬ 
nexion between the two countries, England and Spain, with 
great jealousy; and it w 7 as also very unpopular in England, 
and the knowledge that it was so determined on kindled a 
most formidable insurrection. It had been carefully con- 






MARY. 


297 


xxxr.] 

sidered, and the parts to be borne in it assigned to separate 
leaders, when Gardiner, whose suspicions had been awakened, 
contrived to extract from the weakness of the earl of Devon¬ 
shire certain information as to the existence, if not as to the 
details, of the plot. The other conspirators, finding them¬ 
selves betrayed, precipitated their attempts, and thus de¬ 
prived them of the simultaneousness which could alone have 
rendered them successful. The most formidable effort was 
made in Kent by sir Thomas Wyatt, who suddenly appeared 
at the head of 1500 men, seized Rochester, and marched 
upon London, being joined by such numbers on his march, 
that when he reached Deptford he had 15,000 followers 
around his standard; but the Londoners refused to join 
him. The queen, who again displayed the greatest courage 
and presence of mind, offered a reward for his arrest; dis¬ 
appointed and dismayed, he hesitated what course to pursue, 
and his hesitation was fatal to him. He was seized, and 
committed to the Tower, and soon after tried and beheaded. 
The only peer except Courteney who was implicated in this 
rebellion was the duke of Suffolk. As soon as the news of 
Wyatt’s rising reached London, he hastened down to War¬ 
wickshire, to rouse the people there to a similar attempt; 
but he too was seized, and brought to London as a prisoner. 
He shared the fate of Wyatt, as he deserved; but very 
general commiseration was excited by the execution of his 
daughter, lady Jane Grey, and her husband, whom his treason 
also consigned to the scaffold. It was not imputed to them 
that they had ever been in the very slightest degree privy 
to the conspiracy, but the emperor, whose son the queen was 
about to marry, urged her, for her own safety, to put them to 
death, as affording a possible pretext for subsequent rebel¬ 
lions. Gardiner seconded the advice with all the energy of 
his character, and their previous conviction for treason in as¬ 
suming the crown being revived against them, they were 
beheaded on the 12th of February. 

In July Philip landed at Southampton, and proceeded in 
great state to Winchester, where he was married to Mary 
by Gardiner, as the queen would not consent that the arch¬ 
bishop Cranmer should officiate in her presence. But 
Gardiner himself had opposed the match with all his power, 
and finding himself unable to prevent it, had provided care¬ 
fully for the independence of the kingdom ; stipulating in the 
treaty in which the marriage was agreed upon, that the 


A.D. 

1554. 


298 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. whole power of the government should still belong ex- 

1554 . clusively to the queen; that Philip should not take either 
her or her children abroad without the consent of the 
nobility; and that, though Philip had a son by his former 
marriage, (the unfortunate Don Carlos, whose sad and 
mysterious fate shortly afterwards awakened a curiosity 
and interest which has lasted even to the present day,) 
still any son whom Mary might bear him should inherit, 
with England, his Elemish dominions and the rich duchy 
of Burgundy. 

In another still more important point Gardiner showed 
his spirit and his patriotism; strenuously resisting the 
earnest advice of the emperor that the princess Elizabeth 
should be put to death, on the charge of being implicated in 
Wyatt’s rebellion. In those days it could not have been 
difficult to procure evidence against her, though it is far 
from certain that the evidence would have been true. 
Suffolk and Wyatt both stated their intention to raise her 
to the throne; but, though she probably was not wholly 
ignorant of their projected rising, no proof could ever be 
brought of her having countenanced and approved it; while 
she herself constantly denied even the slightest previous 
knowledge of the conspiracy, and Mary was convinced that 
she had been guilty of no overt act. Still the fate of lady 
Jane Grey had been a sad proof that his persuasions, if 
added to those of the Spanish court, were sufficient to de¬ 
stroy the most innocent victims ; and we may reasonably 
believe that his influence would not have been less effectual 
if excited against the princess, than it proved now that it 
was employed in her favour. 

Another parliament was summoned for the November of 
this year; following the evil example of the late reign, 
the minister had excited himself actively to procure the 
election of members favourable to the measures about to be 
brought forward; and there was need of management to 
gain the consent necessary to carry them into effect; for 
Mary now laid aside the title of Head of the Church, and 
Pole, as legate, was introduced to the two houses, and made 
them a speech on the sin of schism, and the duty of sub¬ 
mission to the pope, which was followed by an address from 
both the houses requesting Mary to re-establish the papal 
supremacy. An act was speedily passed to secure the due 
effect of so acceptable a petition; and others, the natural 




XXXI.] MARY. 299 

appendages to this, were also enacted, which re-established 
the old religion in all its abuses and absurdities. 

It would have been well if the government had been con¬ 
tented with this; but Spanish ideas now predominated in 
the queen’s councils, and of all the bigots who have disgraced 
the various forms of religion which they have professed, the 
Spaniards have, at all times, been the most intolerant and 
inhuman. The ancient laws against the Lollards, most of 
which had been repealed in the last reign, were revised, and 
the flames of persecution were rekindled in the land, in a 
degree of which no country in Europe, at that time, had 
afforded any example. The chief blame, undoubtedlv, be¬ 
longs to Gardiner, who was the original advocate of such 
ferocious measures, in advising which, he, a second time, 
found himself in opposition to Pole, a man as far more sincere 
in his religious convictions as he was milder and more humane 
in his temper. But Gardiner’s cruelty was far exceeded by 
that of Bonner, bishop of London, who took a fiendish 
delight in the sufferings of his victims, which has made him 
an object of abhorrence even to those of his own religion. 
We will not dwell on the details of this miserable persecu¬ 
tion, in which nearly 300 persons, among whom were 
numbered many of the most learned and virtuous ecclesi¬ 
astics in the kingdom, were burnt alive, for no other crime 
than that of differing from the queen and her advisers in 
the form of their religion. The extreme old age of Latimer, 
the personal kindness which Bidley had perseveringly shown 
to Bonner’s mother, could not save them from the flames ; 
though the constancy with which they and the rest of their 
fellow-martyrs bore their sufferings, probably encouraged 
more imitators than their agony deterred; and, in the pro¬ 
phetic words of Latimer, kindled such a torch in England 
as has not yet been, and we may feel assured never will be, 
extinguished. 

Personal feelings of resentment on the part of the queen 
against the man whom she regarded as one of the principal 
agents in her mother’s divorce, probably lent additional 
firmness to the resolution that the archbishop himself should 
be the crowning victim. Cranmer had every virtue but 
firmness; but unhappily there is no quality so indispensable 
to a public man, none of which the absence, if it be absent, 
is so conspicuous, or of which the want exposes him to such 
pitiless reprehension. On more than one occasion, in the 


A.D. 

1555 . 



A.D. 

1555- 

155G. 


f300 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

reigns of Henry and Edward, his want of resolution had suf¬ 
fered him to consent to measures which he knew to be 
wrong; and now, when deprived of those fellow-sufferers and 
advisers, whose exhortations might have given him courage, 
he was unable to face unshrinkingly the prospect of the 
most agonizing of deaths, and, in the vain hope of saving his 
life, he recanted, and signed a formal and positive denial ot 
the truths which he had long taught, and which he still 
believed to be undeniable. Those who reproach his memory 
with the bitterness with which some have permitted them¬ 
selves to speak of him should feel very sure that, if exposed 
to similar temptations, and threatened by similar agonies, 
they themselves would escape a similar downfal. Those 
who doubt themselves, and very few can fail to do so, will 
rather remember his learning, his wisdom, his real piety, his 
unfeigned repentance, and, attributing his sin to the infirmi¬ 
ties of our common nature, will still cherish his memory as 
that of him to whom, more than to any one other person, we 
owe the preservation of the pure apostolic form of worship 
which still distinguishes our national Church. On the day 
appointed for his death he was brought into St. Mary’s 
Church, at Oxford, in which city he had long been kept a 
prisoner, and exhorted to confirm his recantation to the peo¬ 
ple. But strength returned to him in his last moments as 
it did to Samson ; and, the very horrors of his situation 
giving him unwonted energy, he publicly owned the sin of 
which he had been guilty, asked pardon for it of the people 
and of G-od, and, when bound to the stake, thrust his hand 
boldly into the flames as the member which, by signing his 
recantation, had chiefly offended, and held it there w T ith 
heroic firmness till it was consumed. 

At the end of the year 1555 Gardiner died; and, about 
the same time, Charles V., finding his health decaying, re¬ 
signed the crown of Spain to Philip. The Erench govern¬ 
ment, who saw this accession of power to their greatest 
enemy with natural reluctance, attempted to counteract it by 
exciting a conspiracy in England, of which the avowed object 
w r as to depose Mary, and to place Elizabeth on the throne. 
It was betrayed, and those of the conspirators who were 
unable to escape were executed, and Elizabeth herself, though 
there is no reason for thinking that she was in the slightest 
degree acquainted with the design, w r as in some danger of a 
similar fate, but was saved by the interposition of Philip 



MARY. 


301 


XXXI.] 

himself, not, as we may fairly suppose, from any particular 
regard to mercy or justice, which had seldom influence over 
his unfeeling heart, but because her death would leave the 
queen of Scots the heiress to the throne, who was on the 
point of being married to the dauphin; and Philip was as 
unwilling to see England united to Erance, as the French 
could be to see it connected in a similar manner with 
Spain. 

For, though Mary buoyed herself up with hopes of an 
heir, Philip had ceased to indulge any such expectations ; 
and, in 1556, he left the kingdom for some time to take 
possession of his new inheritance. Much as he was disliked, 
the queen became still more unpopular after his departure. 
Even the Koman Catholics themselves beheld the persecu¬ 
tion of the reformers with horror and disgust; and all 
classes were united in feelings of discontent by the arbitrary 
manner in which she extorted loans and benevolences, with¬ 
out the consent of parliament, to support her husband in the 
foreign wars, which exhausted even the vast treasures which 
America was pouring into the Spanish harbours. 

He returned in March, 1557, but had scarcely landed 
before two more attempts to dethrone the queen were made 
by some of those who, after the last conspiracy, had found a 
refuge in France. One was betrayed at the very commence¬ 
ment, but the second was carried so far by Thomas Stafford, 
the second son of lord Stafford, that he actually landed 
with a French and Scotch force on the Yorkshire coast, 
seized Scarborough Castle, and issued a formal proclamation 
against the queen’s government.- He was soon taken and 
executed ; and the notoriety of the assistance which Henry 
had lent him facilitated the wish of Philip to involve England 
in his quarrel with France. 

In June war was declared against that country, and an 
English force, which was sent to join Philip’s army, bore a 
share in the decisive victory of St. Quentin, which was 
gained over the constable Montmorenci in the autumn. But 
in the winter the loss sustained on that field was partly 
avenged on the English by the capture of Calais, which was 
attacked by the duke de Guise on Hew Year’s Hay, and 
surrendered in three weeks, after having belonged to 
England for upwards of two centuries. 

In reality the loss of the town was a gain to England. 
The commercial advantages derived from its possession were 


A.D. 

1556— 

1557. 


1558. 


a.d. unimportant; the cost of its defence was great: and its 
lo58. retention undoubtedly kept alive the feelings of irritation 
and enmity between the two countries; but the national 
pride was severely wounded by its reduction, and Mary 
shared it so far as to declare, on more than one occasion, 
that when she died the loss of Calais would be found 
engraved upon her heart. 

That event was nearer at hand than she expected. She 
again cherished hopes of presenting the kingdom with an 
heir; but the symptoms which she mistook for those of 
pregnancy turned out to be dropsical, and the medicines 
which she took under the mistaken view of her complaint in 
which she persisted, were in the last degree injurious to her. 
When her hopes were dispelled, and her imminent danger 
revealed to her, she prepared for death with resignation; 
and the only subjects on which she betrayed anxiety were, 
that her sister would be kind to her old servants, and would 
preserve the old religion. On the 17th of November she 
died, and on the evening of the same day cardinal Pole, her 
most trusted minister since the death of Gardiner, also 
expired. 

She was but forty-two years of age, and she had reigned 
not quite five years and a half. She was not devoid of good 
qualities. She was kind to her dependants, she displayed 
eminent good sense, courage, and presence of mind in times 
of rebellion and peril, and she was firmly attached to what 
she believed to be the true interests of her country. The 
unparalleled persecution of the Protestants, which she sanc¬ 
tioned, has left an indelible reproach upon her memory ; yet 
she was not naturally cruel, but at first only too easily led 
by the suggestions of designing and cruel men. Still the 
facility with which she suffered herself to be led into such 
atrocities was disgraceful in a sovereign, and revolting in a 
woman. The barbarities practised had not even the tyrant’s 
worst justification, success. They disgusted more than 
they terrified. They failed at the time to check the progress 
of the B-elormation, and the recollection of them is probably 
to this day not without its effect in contributing to the 
general hatred with which the papal religion is regarded in 
this island. 






CHAPTER XXXII. 


ELIZABETH. 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Ferdinand. 

Maximilian II. . 1504 
Rodolph . . .1576 

Scotland. 

Mary. 

James VI. . . 1587 


France. a.d. 
Henry II. 

Francis II. . . 1559 

Charles IX. . . 1560 

Henry III. . . 1574 

Henry IV. . . 1589 

, Spain. 

Philip II. 

Philip III. . . 1598 


Popes. A.D. 
Paul IV. 

Pius IV. . . . 1559 

Pius V. . . . 1565 

Gregory XIII. . 1572 
Sextus V. . . 1585 

Urban III. . . 1590 

Gregory XIV. . 1590 
Innocent IX. . 1591 
Clement VIII. . 1591 


The accession of Elizabeth was hailed with satisfaction by 
almost all classes of her subjects. The most patriotic of the 
Roman Catholics had seen with concern and indignation the 
loss of Calais, and the depreciation of the renown of their 
country in the eyes of foreigners ; and many, even of those 
who were most firmly attached to their religion, had wit¬ 
nessed with horror the unprecedented cruelties exercised on 
the supporters of the new forms, while the reformers indulged 
a sanguine confidence that, in spite of her conformity to the 
Roman Catholics during her sister’s reign, she would be 
found in her heart to prefer their doctrines to those of their 
rivals, and would at least deliver them from persecution, if 
she did not re-establish their superiority; and, fortunately 
for the kingdom, the political necessities of her situation 
ensured the accomplishment of their hopes. It is true that, 
in legal strictness, her title to the throne arose from her 
father’s will; but, in the general feelings of the people, it 
depended on her rights as his legitimate daughter ; and the 
question of her legitimacy turned entirely on the point 
whether the spiritual supremacy in the kingdom belonged 
to the sovereign or to the pope. She, therefore, at once 
began to break off all connexion with that potentate, re¬ 
leased all those who were imprisoned for their religion, 
recalled the exiles, and, as soon as parliament met, she 
caused the laws of Edward YI. concerning religion to be 
re-enacted, with some slight exceptions and modifications. 
The bishops, all of whom had been appointed in the late 
reign, were so offended at the course which she adopted that 


A.D. 

1558. 






304 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a .d. they refused to officiate at her coronation, till Oglethorpe, 

1558. pishop of Carlisle, was gained over, and the others were 
deprived of their sees. The primacy was vacant by the 
death of Pole, who had succeeded Cranmer, and Parker, a 
man of great learning and of exemplary character, who had 
formerly been her own tutor, was appointed to that now 
more than ever important charge. 

At first Elizabeth retained in their offices the principal 
councillors of her sister; but, as they were all Roman 
Catholics, she added others who were known or believed to 
be more inclined to the doctrines of the Reformation; the 
chief of whom were sir Nicholas Bacon, to whom she com¬ 
mitted the seals as lord keeper, and sir W. Cecil, whom 
she restored to the office of secretary of state, which he had 
held under Edward, and who continued till his death, forty 
years afterwards, to be the minister in whom she placed her 
chief confidence. She had had continual recourse to his advice 
in the difficult circumstances in. which she had often found 
herself placed in the reign of Mary ; and had learnt to con¬ 
ceive a high opinion of his judgment, prudence, and fidelity 
to her interests. That opinion, during a longer tenure of 
power than has ever fallen to the lot of any minister in 
Europe, he never forfeited; but his previous career had 
scarcely given promise of the consistency and honesty which 
distinguished his long and glorious administration. 

He was now thirty-eight years of age, and had owed his 
rise (for his father was a country gentleman of very mode¬ 
rate fortune) to the penetration and kindness of the pro¬ 
tector Somerset; he was in attendance upon him at the 
battle of Pinkey, and was afterwards made his private secre¬ 
tary ; but, when Somerset began to yield to the superior 
influence of Northumberland, Cecil deserted if he did not 
betray him, and attached himself to that ambitious and 
unprincipled noble as long as his star seemed to be in the 
ascendant. Erom him he obtained the honour of knight¬ 
hood ; but, when danger seemed to threaten his fortunes 
also, the crafty courtier began to keep aloof from his coun¬ 
cils. He pretended to be ill; and though his friend, lord 
Audley, sent him his own family recipe of a hedgehog stewed 
in rosewater, he could not be recovered sufficiently to bear anv 
share in the dangerous plots of his new patron; and it was 
only through fear of losing the office of secretary of state, 
to which he had lately been appointed, that he was induced 
to add his signature to Edward’s will, by which he appointed 



ELIZABETH. 


305 


XXXII.] 


the lady Jane the heiress of his kingdom. It cost him 
many a falsehood and many a meanness to gain his pardon 
from Mary, though he had made what amends he could by 
plotting against Northumberland from the first moment 
that he quitted London to assume the command of the 
army; and though he was equally prompt in betraying 
Jane, whose succession he had sworn to promote; putting 
himself forward as the prime leader of the reaction which so 
speedily took place in favour of Mary’s rightful claims to 
her inheritance. He could not, however, preserve his office, 
though he conformed to the Homan Catholic religion, and 
(except in one instance, when he was provoked into remon¬ 
strating in his place in parliament against the encroach¬ 
ments of the pope on the prerogatives of the crown) showed 
himself in all respects compliant to the will of the reigning 
sovereign. When he found that, though he had secured 
himself toleration, he could not expect favour, he retired to 
his home at Burleigh, and occupied himself in superintend¬ 
ing the management of his mother’s estate, and in watching 
with wary eye the events which from time to time clouded 
and perplexed the political hemisphere. Now, when called 
to assume a leading share in the government of the state, 
he applied to the affairs of his new sovereign the same 
qualities which had preserved himself in safety through the 
trying vicissitudes which he had experienced, and which 
had increased the timidity and suspicion which were in 
some degree natural to his character. He was not a mi¬ 
nister of original enterprising genius; but he was perhaps 
more fitted to guide the vessel of the state in safety through 
the storms which menaced and the quicksands which sur¬ 
rounded it than if he had been such. His forte lay not so 
much in forming large and far-sighted plans of general 
government as in avoiding present dangers: amid such his 
presence of mind and fertility of resource never failed him; 
and the stability of Elizabeth’s throne and the general 
success of her government were owing in no small degree to 
the unfaltering and, at times, unscrupulous discretion with 
which Cecil picked his way among the difficulties of the 
most complicated and often of the most opposite character. 
Cecil had a decided preference for the Protestant religion, 
leaning indeed rather to the more rigid fashions of the 
Swiss reformers, who were followed by the English Puritans, 
who began to become a prominent party in this reign, than 

x 


A.D. 

1558. 


306 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. to the slighter deviations from the Roman Catholic worship 

1558. established by Cranmer ; though, in this point, his mistress 
was far from agreeing with him. He had pressed upon 
her at her accession the necessity of wholly separating 
from the Romish Church, and he gladly devised measures 
for carrying his advice into complete effect. The greediness 
of the courtiers seconded him, for the revenues of the 
Church were still sufficiently ample to tempt the spoiler. 
Cecil, whose patrimony had been already increased from 
that source by his early patron, Somerset, was not averse to 
still further additions ; and, during the whole reign, a gra¬ 
dual process continued of alienating the estates of the dif¬ 
ferent chapters or sees, in which the queen at times herself 
took a prominent part. 

1559. Unhappily, the severities which had been exercised to¬ 
wards the reformers, under Mary, inspired them with a 
desire of retaliation now that they had recovered the upper 
hand. It was many years before any one was put to death 
for his religion ; but laws of the most unjust and impolitic 
cruelty, for the suppression of the Roman Catholic religion, 
were at once enacted. It might have been hoped, it might 
even have been expected, from persons of such judgment as 
Elizabeth and Cecil, that they, who had themselves conformed 
under compulsion, would have learnt, by their own experience, 
the powerlessness of such constraint to influence the heart; 
especially as the queen herself had a decided leaning towards 
many of the principal tenets of the Roman Catholics ; and, on 
the questions of the sacrament, of the use of crosses and 
images, and of the celibacy of the clergy, certainly preferred 
their doctrines to those of the reformers: but persecution 
has seldom, if ever, taught mercy, and, besides the Act of 
Supremacy, which compelled all holders of any preferment 
or office to renounce the spiritual jurisdiction of the pope, 
another, called the Act of Uniformity, was also passed, pro¬ 
hibiting, under the most rigorous penalties, the use of any 
form of worship but that of the newly established liturgy; 
and this law was enforced with great vigilance: men and 
even women of high rank and unblemished character were 
imprisoned for long periods for no other offence than that of 
hearing mass, or listening to the preaching of a Roman 
Catholic priest; and, as this severity naturally engendered 
disaffection towards the government, fresh laws of gradually 
increasing rigour were from time to time enacted; persons 


ELIZABETH. 


307 


XXXII.] 

were put to the torture on the mere suspicion of having 
violated their provisions: at last, in the year 1577, capital 
punishment began to be inflicted on recusants, and, in the 
course of the next few years, nearly 200 persons were exe¬ 
cuted for their adherence or return to the Roman Catholic 
faith; though an attempt was made, in most cases, to give 
these executions a political rather than a religious character, 
by asserting the refusal to disown the papal supremacy to be 
in itself an act of high treason. 

When Elizabeth came to the throne she found war sub¬ 
sisting between France and England ; and Philip, though he 
was already negotiating for peace, would willingly have con¬ 
tinued hostilities, if she would have co-operated with him, 
endeavouring to tempt her to such a course by the offer of 
assisting her to recover Calais. But she discerned the true 
interest of her country too well to listen to his proposals; 
and acceded to the treaty of Chateau Cambresis, on terms 
which virtually abandoned that town; and, as Scotland 
also was included in the peace, she thus restored entire 
tranquillity to her dominions, and obtained leisure to direct 
her whole attention to the improvement of the general 
welfare of her subjects; establishing judicious regulations 
for the encouragement of agriculture, and also for the pro¬ 
motion of trade and commerce; while, to ensure peace in 
the most effectual manner by showing herself prepared for 
war, she introduced the manufacture of gunpowder and 
cannons, for which the kingdom had hitherto depended on 
foreign supplies. She built several ships of war, and induced 
the wealthy merchants and citizens of the principal seaports 
to do the same. 

It has been mentioned that Scotland was included in the 
peace lately made between England and France; but, 
though there was peace between the two countries, there 
was not friendship between the two queens. Unhappily, 
two causes combined to render Mary an object of jealousy 
to Elizabeth; a feeling which became the parent of a long 
series of acts of meanness and folly, and at last of cruel in¬ 
justice and inexpiable crime. They were first cousins, Mary 
being the child of Margaret, the eldest daughter of Henry 
VII.; and, in the first place, Elizabeth was jealous of her 
title to the throne, which, in the eyes of those who main¬ 
tained the legality of the marriage of Henry VIII. to 
Catharine of Arragon, was superior to her own; and Mary, 

x 2 


A.D. 

io5y. 


308 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. who was married to the dauphin of France, had, on the acces- 

1559. s j on 0 f Elizabeth, been compelled by her father-in-law to 
assume the arms and title of queen of England, in retaliation 
for the adoption by Elizabeth of the title of queen of France. 
It was true that all the English sovereigns since Henry V. 
had borne the title of king of France; but as the Salic law, 
which incapacitates females from succeeding to the crown, 
prevails there, it was manifest that Elizabeth could not have 
been queen of that country, even had her father possessed an 
actual instead of a titular sovereignty over it. She was 
perhaps even more jealous of Mary’s beauty. Wise as she 
was in other respects, she was the slave of the most ceaseless 
and domineering vanity that ever made a woman ridiculous. 
Even in the decline of life she issued a proclamation, warn¬ 
ing her subjects that no portrait that had ever been painted 
of her did justice to her beauty ; and forbidding any engrav¬ 
ings to be sold which might give an inadequate idea of it. 
In reality, if we may trust the report of the Yenetian 
ambassador, which he certainly did not mean to be unfa¬ 
vourable, she was fine-looking 7 rather than handsome ; and 
though she certainly would not have coincided in this de¬ 
scription, she could not hear without a pang of the un¬ 
equalled beauty and grace of Mary, of the fascination of her 
manner and conversation, and of the universal admiration 
and love which she excited. Unfortunately for her reputa¬ 
tion she had many ways of exhibiting the ill feeling which 
Mary had excited in her breast. She had been but a short 
time on the throne when Henry II. of France was killed in 

1560. a tournament. Mary’s husband, who became king under 
the title of Francis II., also died in the course of the year 
1561; and Mary became desirous of returning to her native 
kingdom. It was in a most disturbed and dangerous state; 
in no country in Europe had the Reformation produced such 
violent scenes of discord as in Scotland, under the fanatical 
guidance of Knox, and the almost equally fierce resistance of 
those chiefs who adhered to the old religion. At last several 
of the most powerful nobles, who were attached to the 
reformed doctrines, formed themselves into an association, 
to which they gave the title of the Congregation of the 
Lord, and waged open war against the queen dowager, who 
governed the kingdom as regent during the minority and 


7 Graziosa piu che bella. 


ELIZABETH. 


309 


XXXII.] 

absence of Mary. She procured reinforcements from France; 
but this circumstance furnished the Congregation with a 
pretext for applying for aid to Elizabeth, who gladly seized 
the opportunity of interfering in the affairs of Scotland, and 
at the same time of annoying the rival of whom she was 
jealous. She assembled an army on the borders ; sent a fleet 
into the Frith of Forth, which laid siege to Leith, forced the 
French garrison to evacuate it, and compelled the French 
leaders, acting on behalf of Mary, (for the regent died during 
the progress of hostilities,) to sign a treaty at Edinburgh, by 
which they undertook that Mary and her husband should 
abandon the title of sovereigns of England, and make repara¬ 
tion to Elizabeth for the injury done her by their groundless 
assumption of it. 

Mary, however, evaded the ratification of this treaty, as 
containing conditions which the French leaders who agreed 
to it had no authority to make, though she in reality com¬ 
plied with them so far as to lay aside the title of which 
Elizabeth complained; and, as Elizabeth feared that the 
death of Francis might render the English Roman Catholics 
more inclined to support Mary’s claim to the throne, now 
that there was no longer any danger of its assertion leading 
to a union with France, she gladly laid hold of the pretext 
which Mary’s evasion afforded her, to carry further her in¬ 
trigues with the Scottish reformers. And when Mary, in 
preparation for her return to her own country, applied to 
her for a safe conduct in case she should find it desirable to 
pass through England on her way, she ungenerously denied 
it, as a favour which her refusal to ratify the treaty of Edin¬ 
burgh deprived her of all right to ask, and sent out a fleet 
to endeavour to intercept her on her passage, which took 
three of the vessels in attendance on her, though a thick fog 
protected the queen herself from their attempts. In spite, 
however, of the indignation which she must have felt at this 
unprovoked and treacherous act of hostility, Mary, on her 
arrival among her subjects, found herself so surrounded with 
difficulties, and perceived that the influence either for good 
or evil, which Elizabeth had already acquired in her domi¬ 
nions, was so considerable, that she became desirous to bury 
all previous causes of disagreement in oblivion, and offered 
at once to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, if Elizabeth on her 
part would cause her to be acknowledged as (what in truth 
she was) the successor to the throne in the event of her own 


A.D. 

1560. 


310 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. death without issue. Elizabeth’s jealousy hindered her from 

1560. a g ree i n g to this proposal, though its evident reasonableness 
prevented her from renewing any complaints of Mary on 
the ground of her refusal to ratify the treaty in question. 

It was natural that a princess in the bloom of youth (she 
was twenty-five years of age at her sister’s death), and pos¬ 
sessed of so noble an inheritance, should attract the addresses 
of many suitors. The last honours had scarcely been paid 
to Mary when Philip offered himself to her acceptance, and 
undertook to procure from the pope a dispensation for a 
marriage with his wife’s sister. The pope, who maintained 
the validity of the sanction given by his predecessor to the 
marriage of Catharine with Henry VIII., could not well 
have refused to repeat that permission in so similar an 
instance: but Elizabeth, whose legitimacy depended on the 
assertion of its invalidity, was of course precluded from 
admitting that to be lawful in her own case, which she 
denied to be so in the case of her father; and Philip soon 
afterwards married a French princess. But others proposed 

15G1. themselves, against whom there was no such objection. The 
prince of Sweden, the duke of Holstein, the archduke 
Charles of A ustria, the earl of Arran, the heir to the crown 
of Scotland if Mary should die childless, were all candidates 
for her hand with more than one of her own subjects. 
Elizabeth’s vanity was flattered by so many addresses, which 
she attributed in a great degree to her personal charms ; 
and her policy made her unwilling to convert any of her 
suitors into enemies by too positive a rejection of their 
offers. Cecil wished that her choice might fall on the earl 
of Arran; but her own inclinations pointed to lord Robert 
Dudley, a younger son of the late duke of Northumberland. 
He had a handsome person, and agreeable, courtly manners ; 
but in every other respect was the most worthless of man¬ 
kind. He was already a widower, and was believed to have 
murdered his wife, Amy Robsart, w r hose sufferings have been 
immortalized in one of the most exquisite tales of our great 
novelist. He was destitute of virtue, ability, and even of 
courage; yet he had early gained the favourable regard of 

1562. the queen. One of her first acts of power had been to 
appoint him her master of the horse ; and she subsequently 
created him earl of Leicester, and enabled him to support 
his rank by ample gifts of crown lands. So discreditable 
would such a choice have appeared to the world that even 




ELIZABETH. 


311 


XXXII.] 

Cecil, cautious of giving offence as he was, presented a strong a.d. 
memorial to her to dissuade her from it; and she abandoned 15fJ2, 
the idea, though her partiality for Dudley continued till his 
death, and led her not only seriously to damage her own 
character, but even to sacrifice the welfare of her allies and 
the safety of her own armies to his cowardice and incapacity. 

For a w T hile she seemed to have laid aside all thoughts of 
marriage, and announced her intention of dying a virgin 
queen. But such a declaration was supposed to have pro¬ 
ceeded rather from a real or affected coyness, than from any 
serious resolution. Other princes, among whom were the 
French dukes of Anjou and Alenqon, aspired to her alliance, 
and the archduke Charles more than once renewed his 
addresses, and was supported by Cecil, after the birth of 
James of Scotland had rendered Arran’s chance of succession 
to that crown more problematical. But Alenqon was the 
suitor to whom she herself, after she had given up all idea of 
Leicester, seemed most favourable, giving him a ring from her 
own finger in presence of the court, and making him a large 
present of money to aid him in his campaign in Flanders, 
when he was offered the sovereignty of the states which had 
revolted from Philip. The parliament more than once en¬ 
treated her to marry, or else to allow a bill to be passed to 
settle the succession to the crown, and pressed their petition 
with additional importunity after her life had been threatened 
by a severe illness; but, though on one occasion she allowed 
Cecil to assure the houses that she did mean to marry, they 
generally only drew upon themselves a severe reprimand for 
interfering in matters which she asserted to be beyond their 
province; and their request, reasonable as it was, was dis¬ 
regarded, for she never did marry, and, to the end of her 
life, constantly prevented the adoption of any measures 
which should recognize, or be equivalent to the recognition 
of, any one as her successor. 

In France the death of Francis II. had added fuel to the 
religious animosities which distracted that country by throw¬ 
ing the chief power into the hands of Catharine de Medici, 
as regent for her son Charles IX.; and, after a short time, 
both the Boman Catholic and the Huguenot leaders took up 
arms, and waged open war against each other, in which each 1503. 
party committed almost equal atrocities. The lioman 
Catholics soon obtained the aid of Philip of Spain, whose 
ferocious bigotry led him to seek to crush the reformers in 


312 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

every country in Europe; and the Huguenots in consequence 
applied to Elizabeth, offering to give her up the town of 
Havre de Grace if she would assist them. She sent them 
over a strong force of 6000 men, and, what she was usually 
less liberal of, a large supply of money. But the strange 
events of the war, the leaders on both sides being taken 
prisoners, after a few months led to a reconciliation between 
the two factions; and, as she refused to restore Havre, even 
Conde, the chief of the Protestant party, joined the Roman 
Catholics in besieging it. Lord Warwick was the governor, 
with a garrison of above 6000 men. But they were attacked 
by disease, caused by the vapours arising from the marshes 
at the mouth of the Seine. Provisions also fell short, and, 
as the English ministry failed to send him either reinforce¬ 
ments or supplies with the promptitude which the emergency 
required, he was forced to capitulate, on condition of being 
permitted to return with his troops to England; and Eliza¬ 
beth, much chagrined at the result of the enterprise, which 
had done her no credit, and had not facilitated the recovery 
of Calais, for which she had hoped to exchange Havre, 
agreed to a peace with Prance, which continued unbroken 
for the remainder of her reign. 

♦ 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

ELIZABETH (CONTINUED). 

The marriage of the queen of Scotland was a matter as in¬ 
teresting to Elizabeth as her own. The Erench uncles of 
the queen of Scots were desirous of her forming some alliance 
which should strengthen their influence; or, what came to 
nearly the same thing, be embarrassing to Elizabeth, who was 
the main support of the opposite party in Erance ; and they 
proposed, at one time with great apparent probability of suc¬ 
cess, a match between her and the archduke Charles, who has 
been already mentioned as one of the suitors of Elizabeth. 
Elizabeth was exceedingly unwilling that she should marry 
any prince possessed of power sufficient to enable her to re¬ 
press the turbulence of her subjects, and perhaps to become 
formidable to England, and pressed her rather to choose an 
English nobleman; at last naming Leicester as the one 
on whom she desired to see Mary’s choice fall. Mary was 



ELIZABETH. 


313 


XXXIII.] 

with reason offended at such a proposal, thinking, in the A - D * 
first place, that, if it was made seriously, it was degrading 
to her, since Leicester’s birth was not such as to render him 
a, fit match for a queen; and secondly, that in all pro¬ 
bability it was not intended to be accepted, as Leicester 
was believed to be too much in favour with Elizabeth herself 
for her to be willing to part with him; and she was led at 
last by her own inclinations, as well as by the advice of her 
councillors, to fix on Henry Darnley, the eldest son of the 
earl of Lennox, a young man of royal descent; in fact he was, 
after herself, the next heir to the crown of England; more¬ 
over, as an English noble, he seemed to combine every pos¬ 
sible recommendation. 

Elizabeth, when she heard of Mary’s intentions, behaved 15G4. 
with even more than her usual duplicity ; while she thought 
it was but a passing fancy she professed to approve of it; but, 
as soon as she found that the queen of Scots had really re¬ 
solved on it, she endeavoured to throw every possible obstacle 
in the way; summoned Darnley to return to England, and 
threw his mother and brother, who happened to be in that 
kingdom, into prison. The marriage took place in July, 

1565, and proved most unfortunate. Darnley was possessed 
of great personal attractions, but of scarcely any good 
qualities ; he was vain, weak, and vicious, and absurdly jealous, 
not only of the queen’s attachment to him, which at first 
was certainly sincere, but of her superior abilities. He soon 
became a tool in the hands of the most violent of the nobles ; 
some of whom were ill-affected towards the queen on account 
of her religion, and some from the natural turbulence of 
their disposition. By his misconduct of various kinds he 
gradually alienated the queen’s affection and changed it into 
dislike and contempt; and at last, by a crowning act of 
atrocity, into a settled and unalterable hatred. Mary had a 
secretary of foreign birth, but of eminent talents, David 
Bizzio by name, who had gradually become possessed of her 
entire confidence. He had also, at one time, stood high in 
the favour of Darnley himself; but after a while, some of 
those lords who were the chief supporters of the Protestant 
interest instilled into Darnley’s weak mind feelings of 
jealousy against Eizzio, and persuaded him to consent to his 
murder, which they perpetrated with every circumstance of 
aggravation which their cruelty or disloyalty could devise. 


314 HISTORY OE ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.i>. Mary, who was near her confinement, was sitting at supper 

] oGG. w j^] 1 th e Italian and some of the ladies of her court, when 
the conspirators burst into her room, dragged the unhappy 
secretary from her presence, and despatched him with their 
daggers. Mary never forgave her husband, whom she looked 
upon, if not as the chief author of the atrocity, at least as 
the one whose share in it was the most criminal; nor did even 
the birth of her son, afterwards James I. of England, revive 
her affection for his father. An outward show of reconcilia¬ 
tion indeed took place, but it was so notorious that it was 
not real, that his enemies, some provoked by his insolence, 
and others by the treachery with which he had sought to 
throw on them all the blame of the murder of Eizzio, did 
not scruple to form a most atrocious plot for his destruction, 
trusting (as it turned out afterwards with only too much 
accuracy of judgment) that Mary would not punish too 
severely a deed which relieved her of a husband whom she 
had learnt to hate and to despise. 

1567. The chief contriver of the plot was the earl of Bothwell, a 
nobleman, who, though possessed neither of personal grace, 
nor of eminent abilities, had lately risen high in Mary’s 
favour. He communicated his design to others, assur¬ 
ing them of the queen’s privity to, and approbation of it, 
though as, when pressed to produce some proof of her con¬ 
sent, he was unable to do so, his statement on this point 
was probably false. At a later period Mary’s enemies pro¬ 
fessed to have discovered letters addressed by her to him, 
which contained full proofs of her accession to the plot, but 
which, if they had been genuine, he would surely have 
shown at least to earl Morton, who, in his last hours, de¬ 
clared, that though he pressed Bothwell earnestly for one 
word in writing from the queen, he could not produce one. 
While the plot was maturing, Darnley fell sick of the small¬ 
pox, and his danger appeared to have revived some portion of 
Mary’s affection for him; she nursed him in his illness, brought 
him to Edinburgh as soon as he was convalescent, and lived 
with him in a house outside the town, that being a better 
situation for an invalid than Holyrood Palace. But it was 
known that she would pass the night of the 9th of February at 
Holyrood, because she had promised to attend the marriage 
of a favourite servant there ; and that same night the house, 
in which Darnley was, was blown up, and his dead body was 


ELIZABETH. 


315 


XXXIII.] 

found at some distance, in such a condition as induced the a.d. 
belief that he had been strangled and removed out of the 
house before the explosion took place. 

Universal opinion pointed to Bothwell as the murderer; 
and the earl of Lennox, Darnley’s father, openly accused him 
of it, and wrote to the queen demanding speedy justice. 
Darnley had proved so unworthy of her love that it was 
natural that she should feel but little sorrow at his death; 
but her conduct was now marked by such infatuated folly, 

(and folly itself is criminality in a ruler of a nation,) that 
it gave but too much colour to the suspicions of those, and 
they were many, who believed that she herself had been ac¬ 
cessory to the dark deed which had been perpetrated. She 
allowed Bothwell to remain at liberty, and even to have 
access to herself; she hurried on the trial, ordering it to 
take place at the end of a fortnight, and refusing Lennox’s 
application for its postponement; and as, on the appointed 
day, no accuser appeared, (for Lennox had had no time to 
collect his proofs,) Bothwell was acquitted, and was imme¬ 
diately selected by Mary as the object of increased honours. 

It soon appeared that he was destined to strange promotion. 
Probably not ten persons in all Scotland believed in his in¬ 
nocence, yet a number of the most powerful nobles signed 
an address to Mary, in which, after mentioning his acquittal, 
they urged her, for the good of the kingdom, to contract a 
fresh marriage, and recommended Bothwell as the object of 
her choice. There can be no doubt that a paper, so dis¬ 
graceful to those who signed it, never would have been 
drawn up at all if its purport had not been known to be 
agreeable to the queen, but, as she thought it seemly or 
prudent to give an evasive answer, Bothwell, before the 
end of April, waylaid her on one of her journeys, and 
carried her by force to Dunbar, where, however, she re¬ 
mained willingly, and after a few days granted him a public 
pardon for the violence which he had offered her, and 
created him duke of Orkney. 

If any thing could add further disgrace to the shame of 
this strange series of errors and crimes, it was to be found in 
the fact that Bothwell was already married; a divorce, how¬ 
ever, was readily procured, and, though Elizabeth addressed 
a strong remonstrance to Mary on the folly of her conduct, 
and though the French ambassador refused to be present at 
the ceremony, the marriage of Mary and Bothwell took 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


316 



a.d. place on the 15th of May, scarcely more than three months 

1567. after the murder of Darnley. 

Their nuptial joys were rudely interrupted. The reformers 
gladly availed themselves of the universal disgust which the 
queen’s conduct had excited to raise a confederacy against 
her, which was speedily joined by many of the most re¬ 
spectable Homan Catholics also, and even by several of those 
who had joined in recommending Bothwell to her choice. 
They raised an armed force, the queen also assembled her 
troops; but, when the two armies met on Carberry Hill, on 
the 15th of June, only one month after the fatal wedding-day, 
Mary discovered that she could no longer trust the loyalty 
of her soldiers. She was compelled to surrender, and Both¬ 
well to flee. He escaped to Denmark, and Mary was con¬ 
fined in the castle of Lochleven, under the care of lady 
Douglas, her father’s ancient mistress, and the mother of 
her natural brother, the earl of Murray. 

Elizabeth had naturally taken a great interest in these 
transactions, and, for a while, seemed inclined to act a 
generous part towards Mary, at whose captivity in the 
hands of her subjects she, as a queen, felt indignant, and 
sent sir Nicholas Throgmorton as her ambassador to Scot¬ 
land, to mediate between her and her rebellious lords. But 
they were of too fierce a disposition to listen to her remon¬ 
strances against their disloyal behaviour, and compelled Mary 
to sign deeds, abdicating the crown in favour of her son, and 
appointing Murray regent during his minority. The young 
prince was crowned in July, under the title of James YI .; 
but the English ambassador, by Elizabeth’s express command, 
refused to countenance the ceremony by his presence, and 
Murray returned from France to assume the regency. But 

1568. his authority created jealousy, the energy with which he 
wielded it produced him enemies, and the helpless situation 
of the queen created a sympathy for her even among many 
of those who had previously taken part against her. She 
escaped from Lochleven, and was speedily joined by a power¬ 
ful body of adherents, who quickly raised a force for her 
defence. But Murray defeated her army at Langside; she 
fled from the field, and, in spite of the remonstrances of some 
of her most earnest friends, determined to take refuge in 
England, a ruinous determination, fatal to her own liberty, 
and ultimately to her life; more fatal still to the character 
of Elizabeth. She believed that she had good reason to rely 


ELIZABETH. 


317 


XXXIII.] 

on the friendship of Elizabeth, who had shown great inclina¬ 
tion to assist her while in captivity, great good will towards 
her after her escape, and who was also her nearest relation. 
But the queen of England, after long and anxious consulta¬ 
tion with Cecil, determined on detaining her a prisoner, and 
caused her to be removed from Carlisle to Bolton, in York¬ 
shire, refusing her the interview which she requested till she 
had cleared herself of the charge of accession to her hus¬ 
band’s murder. Mary professed her willingness to justify 
herself to Elizabeth as a kinswoman and a friend. Elizabeth 
appointed a commission, at the head of which was the duke 
of Norfolk, to examine the case at York ; but subsequently 
she removed it to Hampton Court; there Murray brought 
forward fresh evidence in support of his accusation of Mary 
as privy to Darnley’s murder, though he had not appeared 
to be in possession of any such proofs while at York, and 
Mary, professing to think it derogatory to her honour 
to reply to this new evidence, which she asserted to be 
forged, ordered her commissioners to abstain from saying 
a word in her defence, but to accuse Murray himself of 
having been privy to Darnley’s murder; in consequence, the 
examinations were broken off, and Mary was again removed 
from Bolton to Tutbury, in Staffordshire, where she was 
committed to the care of the earl of Shrewsbury. The 
severity, however, with which she was treated did not break 
her spirit. She steadily refused to surrender her crown, or 
even to share her authority with her son, as Elizabeth now 
urged her to do, and demanded permission to quit England, 
and retire into France, which was resolutely refused. 

Many, however, of the English nobles disapproved greatly 
of the treatment which she received. The earl of Northum¬ 
berland offered to aid her to escape ; and the duke of Norfolk, 
with the approbation of a large and powerful party of his 
brother peers, sought her hand in marriage. Leicester, 
whose influence with Elizabeth was supposed to be para¬ 
mount, favoured the project: but, in political affairs, the 
queen was guided rather by the advice of Cecil, who had 
obtained early information of what was going on, and who 
foresaw that such a marriage, which would render it impos¬ 
sible to keep Mary any longer in confinement, would be 
fraught with danger to the tranquillity of the kingdom. By 
his advice Norfolk was arrested, and committed to the Tower, 
Mary was removed to Coventry, and the earls of Northum- 


A.D. 

1568. 


1570. 


318 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.u. berland and Westmoreland were examined by the earl of 

15 ?0. Sussex, governor of the northern counties, in which their 
influence chiefly lay; but were released from want of evi¬ 
dence of their being implicated in the conspiracy, though, in 
fact, next to Norfolk, they were the most important members 
of it. 

They had not trusted solely to their own power, consider¬ 
able as it was, but had entered also into negotiations with 
the duke of Alva, Philip II.’s governor of the Netherlands, 
who had promised them some troops, and some of his most 
skilful officers to aid them, in case they should find it neces¬ 
sary to have recourse to force ; their impatience and reliance 
on his support led them, on being summoned to appear before 
the queen, to take arms instead, and they raised an army of 
nearly 6000 men, with which they expected to terrify the 
government into the concession of such measures as they 
required. Sussex, however, who had great military abilities, 
easily quelled this premature rising. The leaders escaped 
into Scotland, but great numbers of prisoners were taken; 
and the degree of blame which the outbreak had caused may 
perhaps be estimated by the unexampled severity of their 
punishment, not less than 800 persons having been put to 
death by the hands of the executioner. 

It had also led Elizabeth seriously to doubt of the policy 
of any longer detaining Mary a prisoner, and she first of all 
began to treat with Murray on the subject of restoring her 
to her rights in Scotland, or at least allowing her to live 
there in freedom and safety. But, though it is not likely 
that the negotiations with him would have had any practical 
result, they were broken off by his assassination, which took 
place at the beginning of 1570, and Elizabeth then began to 
treat with Mary herself, sending Cecil to her with offers to 
aid in her restoration to her throne on certain conditions, 
to which she, with the approbation of her advisers at the 
court of France, readily agreed. No part of Elizabeth’s 
conduct to Mary can be justified in respect of either human¬ 
ity, justice, or consistency ; but it is plain that the offers of 
assistance which she now made her were equivalent to an 
admission that she did not believe her guilty of any accession 
beforehand to the murder of her husband; for how could she, 
with any decency, have aided in the restoration to royal 
authority of a person stained with such enormous guilt ? It 
is true that she was not sincere in her offers, for, at the very 


XXXIII.] ELIZABETH. 319 

time that Cecil was discussing them with Mary, he was also 
in communication with Lennox, who was now regent of 
Scotland, encouraging him to persevere in his support of the 
claims of James in opposition to those of his mother; and the 
whole negotiation was soon broken off on the most trivial 
pretences. 

At the same time Mary’s cause was greatly injured in the 
eyes of English partisans, by the rash insolence of the pope, 
Pius V., who, probably with the intention of advancing her 
claims, issued a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, 
in which he professed to absolve her subjects from their 
allegiance to her ; and a man of the name of Eelton was 
found audacious enough to fix the bull to the palace of the 
bishop of London, for which he was very properly executed, 
as guilty of high treason. But Norfolk had been too 
strongly tempted by the prospect of obtaining Mary for his 
wife to abandon such a hope easily ; and, after a time, find¬ 
ing that he had apparently no chance of being restored to 
Elizabeth’s favour, he renewed his negotiations with her and 
her friends, and was desperate enough to treat also with the 
duke of Alva, agreeing to aid him in an invasion of England, 
which, taking Elizabeth by surprise, would, he thought, com¬ 
pel her to agree to all his proposals. He was betrayed, how¬ 
ever, by his own servants, brought to trial, and convicted on 
the clearest evidence; and though Elizabeth delayed for a 
while the execution of his sentence, in June, 1572, he paid 
the penalty of his treason on Tower Hill. 

I have mentioned all these events in one unbroken narra¬ 
tive, on account of their connexion with the queen of Scots. 
But, during the years which they occupied, others also took 
place of great political interest, and also strikingly illustrat¬ 
ing both the personal character of Elizabeth, and her system 
of government. The news of the birth of the young prince 
of Scotland appeared to cause her great mortification; and 
she more than once complained that the queen ot Scots had 
a fair son, while she herself was but a barren stock. At the 
same time it made the parliament more eager than ever to 
have the succession to the crown placed on a firm footing; 
and on one occasion they endeavoured to compel the queen 
to gratify their wishes by coupling the question of the suc¬ 
cession to a grant of supply. She at first took a. high tone, 
and forbade the members to discuss such questions. But 
Peter Wentworth, an honest and fearless member of the 


A.D. 

1571. 


1572. 


1567. 


320 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. lower house, expressed a doubt whether it became parlia- 

1572. men t to attend to any such prohibition; and his remarks 
were so favourably received by his brother members that the 
queen thought it best to revoke her prohibition, and to in¬ 
form the parliament that they were at liberty to debate the 
matter. It is this accurate appreciation of the temper of 
her time and of her people, that constitutes the peculiar 
wisdom of Elizabeth’s government. Burke, the most philo¬ 
sophical of statesmen, has laid it down that, “ If there is any 
one eminent criterion which above all the rest distinguishes 
a wise government from an administration weak and impro¬ 
vident, it is this,—Well to know the best time and manner of 
yielding what it is impossible to keep.” And another most 
sagacious and judicious observer of history 8 , speaking with 
reference to this particular reign, points out further, that 
“ Elizabeth always gave way in time to render her concessions 
a favour.” Having quite as high notions of her royal pre¬ 
rogative, and a disposition quite as arbitrary and severe as 
her father, she always desired and very frequently attempted 
to limit the power of the parliament. She assembled it very 
rarely, sometimes allowing several years to elapse between 
its different meetings. More than once she positively pro¬ 
hibited them from discussing matters of state. At other 
times she forbade them to discuss the affairs of Scotland, or 
of religion. She ordered one member of the house of 
commons, for making a motion against some monopolies 
which she had granted, to be summoned before her council, 
and reprimanded for his disloyalty; and another, by her own 
authority, she forbade to appear any more in his place in the 
house; some she even imprisoned. Sometimes the servility of 
the members kept pace with her own domineering will; but 
as often as her commands or prohibitions excited a spirit of 
discussion and strong remonstrance, she revoked them 
before they could lead to resistance, and usually with such 
gracious expressions as made her concession bear a greater 
appearance of condescension and beneficence, than her pre¬ 
vious imperiousness had worn of illegality and tyranny. 

Many of those who gave her the greatest offence by the 
freedom with which they brought forward measures dis¬ 
pleasing to her, and invaded the authority which she wished 
to assert, were also offensive to her on religious grounds, 


8 Professor Smythe. 


ELIZABETH 


321 


XXXIII.] 


entertaining, as they did, a strong prejudice in favour of that 
more austere form of the Reformation which prevailed in the 
districts where Calvin’s influence predominated. Their reli¬ 
gious bias was believed to be shared by Cecil, Walsingham, 
and others of Elizabeth’s most trusted ministers; though 
the notions of political equality which many of them were 
beginning to deduce from their doctrines of ecclesiastical go¬ 
vernment, were as distasteful to the nobles as to the queen. 

Elizabeth had always taken a great interest in the affairs 
of the Continent; and when the cruelties which the duke of 
Alva perpetrated in Flanders against all who favoured the 
Reformation, drove many of the natives of that country 
from their homes, she encouraged them to settle in England; 
and, as the Flemings were, at that time, the most skilful 
artisans in Europe in many manufactures and arts, their 
settlement in England proved a great and permanent ad¬ 
vantage ; while so great was the gratitude that the inha¬ 
bitants of those provinces felt towards her, that, in 1575, 
they actually, by the advice of the prince of Orange, offered 
her the sovereignty over them; prudence compelled her to de¬ 
cline the offer, but she made an alliance with them, and sup¬ 
plied them with considerable sums of money, and also with 
a formidable body of cavalry; while, at the same time, she 
endeavoured, though without success, to prevail on Philip to 
restore them to their ancient privileges, and to cease to 
treat them as revolted subjects, pursuing them with a war 
which threatened to become one of extermination. 

With the French court she carried on long and intricate 
negotiations, giving Charles IX. hopes that she would still 
agree to the marriage with the duke of Anjou; and seeking 
to persuade him to more conciliatory measures towards the 
Protestants, (whom at the same time she was secretly en¬ 
couraging in their opposition to the court,) till at last she, 
in the spring of 1572, concluded a defensive alliance with 
France, which she expected to find of great importance in 
the event of a war with Spain, of whose unchangeable enmity 
she felt fully assured. 

But her conduct with respect to the French Huguenots 
did little credit to either her sincerity or humanity. In the 
August of the same year the atrocious massacre of the Pro¬ 
testants took place, which excited a general feeling of horror 
in every Protestant state in Europe, and which many Roman 
Catholics also viewed with almost equal detestation. No 

Y 


A.D. 

1572. 


A.D. 

1572 


322 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

one, however, expressed less disapprobation of the act than 
Elizabeth, and even the moderate censure which she did pro¬ 
nounce upon it to the Erench ambassador, appeared to pro¬ 
ceed rather from a wish to save appearances, than from the 
genuine feelings of her heart, for she did not in the least 
abate her partiality for the Erench alliance ; though the 
idea of her marriage with the duke of Anjou had been 
abandoned, she entertained fresh proposals from his bro¬ 
ther, the duke of Alenin, who succeeded to the title of 
Anjou when that prince became king of Poland, with in¬ 
creased cordiality ; and before the end of the year she sent 
an ambassador to Erance, to assist at the baptism of a 
daughter of Charles IX., to whom she became godmother. 
At the same time she contrived to persuade the Huguenots 
that she was eager to support them ; she negotiated with 
Henry, king of Navarre, who was now their chief leader; 
and aided him with her influence, and with some money to 
levy the troops, with which he continued to make head 
against the court, and against the league which the abilities 
of the duke of Gruise had formed, and which aimed at the 
utter destruction of the reformed party throughout the 
Erench dominions. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ELIZABETH (CONTINUED). 

In 1579 fresh causes of discontent arose between England 
and Spain; Erancis Drake having obtained the queen’s con¬ 
sent to conduct an expedition into the Pacific Ocean, 
attacked the Spanish possessions in those quarters, took 
several Spanish ships, and returned home loaded with booty, 
much of which found its way into the royal treasury. The 
Spanish ambassador made a formal complaint to her of these 
transactions, which he stigmatized as piratical; and Eliza¬ 
beth condescended to restore some of the booty ; but, at the 
same time, she showed her approbation of Drake’s conduct 
by visiting him on board his ship, in which he had, in this 
expedition, sailed round the world, and conferring on him the 
honour of knighthood. Philip attempted to retaliate by 
sending a body of Spanish troops to aid the disaffected Irish’; 
but they were forced to surrender, and Philip began to pre¬ 
pare for a more effectual display of his hostility. 



ELIZABETH. 


323 


XXXIV.] 

The long confinement of the queen of Scotland, which, 
from time to time, increased in severity, gave rise to many 
projects for her deliverance, which were the cause of great 
disquietude to Elizabeth ; and, as they were chiefly enter¬ 
tained by Eoman Catholics, they furnished a pretext for 
fresh persecutions of all who adhered to that sect. The 
parliament, many of the ablest and most energetic mem¬ 
bers of which, as has already been said, inclined to the 
puritan doctrines, were eager to gratify all the queen’s 
wishes on that subject ; passing an act to banish all popish 
priests from the kingdom, and entirely to suppress every 
exercise of the Eoman Catholic religion. Under this ini¬ 
quitous law, numbers of persons were put to death, though 
an attempt w T as made to represent these executions as if the 
victims were condemned, not so much for their religion as 
for treasonable practices, of which, however, no proof was 
attempted to be given, and, to give a further colour to this 
pretence, the punishment of the gallows was generally sub¬ 
stituted for that of the stake. 

Nor did the puritan party fare much better than the 
Eoman Catholics. Archbishop Gfrindal, who succeeded Par¬ 
ker, had protected them as far as he could, because he had 
himself a leaning to their doctrines; but, in 1583, he died, 
and the new archbishop, Whitgift, was as little inclined to 
show* them mercy as the queen herself. She looked upon 
them as enemies to the authority of kings, he hated them as 
being, wdiat indeed they avowed themselves, contemners of 
his order, and desirous to suppress the episcopate, or, till 
that could be done, at nil events to confine the power of 
bishops within the narrowest limits; and he easily induced 
her to establish a new* ecclesiastical commission, with power 
to enforce the most rigid uniformity, and to inflict on all 
suspected persons the tortures of the rack, ruinous penalties, 
or protracted imprisonment. 

The Puritans suffered in silence; but the Eoman Catholics, 
more under the dominion of the priesthood, who taught 
that the end justified the means, w r ere, in more than one 
instance, stimulated to endeavour to deliver their brethren 
from the persecution to which they were subjected, by the 
assassination of the queen; and the case of Parry w r as es¬ 
pecially remarkable, both because he was himself a man of 
property and education, and a member of parliament, and 
also because he had consulted the pope’s nuncio and one of 

t 2 


A.D. 

1574 . 


324 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. the cardinals on the lawfulness of his enterprise, and had re- 
ceived from them the warmest approbation and encourage- 
* ment. His plot, however, was betrayed, and he was convicted 
and executed ; but his and similar crimes created an apparent 
justification of the severities exercised by Elizabeth tow r ards 
the Homan Catholics, which was eagerly put forward by the 
ministers and the archbishop, and acquiesced in by those 
who did not consider that in fact the treason complained of 
was provoked by the persecution. 

The remonstrances which Elizabeth had addressed to 
Philip had not been productive of any benefit to the Fle¬ 
mings, who again besought her to accept the sovereignty of 
their provinces ; an offer -which she again refused, but made 
a fresh treaty with them, and agreed to send them over a 
very considerable force both of infantry and cavalry; though 
she rendered this aid almost useless by placing it under the 
command of Leicester. Some time before he had nearly 
lost her favour, by Simier, an agent of the duke of Anjou, 
revealing to her that he was secretly married to the widow 
of the earl of Essex: she threatened to send him to the 
Tower, and he, in revenge, tried to procure the assassination 
of Simier, till the queen gave public notice that she had 
taken the Frenchman under her protection; but he had 
gradually recovered all his ascendancy over her, and now he 
obtained this important command, for which his unfitness 
was rendered more glaring by the circumstance of his being 
opposed to the duke of Parma, a man possessed of consum¬ 
mate skill, both as a politician and as a general. The most 
important event in the campaign was an action which took 
place before Zutphen, a fortress which Leicester w r as be¬ 
sieging, in which he lost his nephew, sir Philip Sidney, who 
-was accounted the flower of the English chivalry, and in 
every respect one of the most virtuous and accomplished 
knights in Europe. Having disgusted the Flemings by his 
insolence almost as much as he had disappointed them by 
his incapacity, Leicester returned to England, and about 
the same time Drake also returned from a second expedi¬ 
tion against the Spanish possessions in America, in which he 
had taken several important towns, and collected a vast booty. 

The queen had not treated James of Scotland with more 
friendship than she had shown to his unhappy mother. Marv 
had, with some truth, affirmed that all the troubles of her 
reign had been owing to the intrigues of Elizabeth, and these 


ELIZABETH. 


325 


XXXIV.] 

intrigues were now steadily directed against the young 
prince. In 1582 Elizabeth had countenanced the violence 
of lord dowry and others, when, in order to break the 
power of Lennox and Arran, his chief ministers, they seized 
him by force, and kept him for some time in close confine¬ 
ment : three years later she endeavoured to procure from 
some of the most powerful of his nobles, a promise to pre¬ 
vent his marriage ; and it is even said that her ambassador, 
sir Edward Wotton, treated with some of the disaffected 
lords to deliver up James to Elizabeth, that he too might be 
kept in confinement similar to that of his mother. 

Little as was the affection that James, one of the worst 
and meanest princes who has ever sullied the kingly dignity, 
showed towards his mother, Mary had always regarded him 
with the most tender affection, and when she heard of his 
captivity and detention in the hands of his rebellious nobles, 
she wrote a pathetic letter to Elizabeth, imploring her to 
interpose for his deliverance; but James found means to 
escape without the intervention of the queen of England; 
and though he was aware of all her plots against him, he, in 
1586, made an offensive and defensive alliance with her, in 
the hope that this union would facilitate his succession to 
her throne at her death, and probably expecting also to have 
her support in the event of his being compelled to engage 
in any open struggle with the presbyterian clergy, who were 
daily becoming more insolent in their language, and more 
dangerous in their designs. 

Elizabeth, however, had a different reason for wishing to 
entangle James in her trammels. She had resolved to put 
his mother to death ; and, as a prelude to such an atrocious 
act, she had for some time been gradually increasing the 
rigour of her treatment. She had transferred her to the 
custody of harsher keepers; and one of those to whose care 
she was now committed, sir Amias Paulet, took every 
opportunity of insulting her—wearing his hat in her pre¬ 
sence ; removing the canopy which, as a mark of her royal 
dignity, had been erected in her sitting-room; and curtailing 
her ordinary amusements. The iniquity of the treatment to 
which Mary was thus subjected, while it excited, as we have 
already said, many, especially amongst the Roman Catholics, 
to form plots for her deliverance, even if they could only be 
brought to a successful result by the death of her oppressor, 


A.D. 

1580— 

1585. 


158G. 


326 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.n. also induced Mary to lend a willing ear to any projects for her 

158G. own release, though the most dispassionate inquirers admit 
that there is no “ complete proof” that she ever gave her con¬ 
sent to any that involved danger to the life of Elizabeth \ It 
would not have been strange if she had countenanced plots 
even against her life: the laws of every country sanction 
the very utmost efforts that men illegally detained make for 
the recovery of their liberty, and the detention of no one 
had ever been marked with greater illegality and treachery 
in its commencement, with more falsehood and cruelty in 
its continuance, than that of Mary. When she first set foot 
in Elizabeth’s dominions she was in no respect subject to 
her, nor was it for a moment pretended that she had com¬ 
mitted any crime against her. On the contrary, she came 
into England invested with every character that might have 
seemed best calculated to secure for her Elizabeth’s sym¬ 
pathy and succour. As a queen flying from her rebellious 
subjects she might well have reckoned on the support of a 
sister sovereign, especially of one who held kingly authority 
so high ; as a cousin, she might have looked for the affec¬ 
tion of her nearest kinswoman; as a brave, high-spirited 
woman, w r ho had struggled boldly, though unsuccessfully, 
against some of the fiercest of the other sex, she might have 
looked for the cordial sympathy of one who herself never 
wanted courage to confront and resolution to subdue dan¬ 
gers. It is true that she had not always been prudent; 
that she had committed one great crime in marrying Both- 
well, stained, as she could not doubt, with the murder of 
her previous husband : but this could hardly have weighed 
with Elizabeth, whose favour to Leicester was not impeded 
by equally strong suspicions that he had murdered his wife; 
while of the fouler charge, of having assented to Darnley’s 
death beforehand, she practically acquitted Mary w T hen she 
offered to assist in her restoration to her kingdom on cer¬ 
tain conditions. The truth apparently is that she was 
jealous of her on a threefold ground : as the sovereign of 
a bordering nation, whose princes had always been trouble- 

1 Hal lam (Eng. Const. Hist., c. iii.) admits that “ these proofs are not perhaps 
complete,” in a chapter expressly devoted to the exculpation of Elizabeth ; and 
lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii., p. 126) expresses his firm 
conviction that nothing had been revealed to Mary beyond “ the plan to libe¬ 
rate herself from imprisonment,” she being “ by no means aware of the intention 
to assassinate Elizabeth.” 


ELIZABETH. 


327 


XXXIV.] 

some and sometimes dangerous neighbours ; as her suc¬ 
cessor in her own kingdom 2 ; and, above all, as her superior 
in beauty, grace, wit, for which she would herself willingly 
have given all her reputation for wise resolution and 
steady sagacity, which had already made her more popular 
among her subjects than perhaps any former sovereign; and 
which still prevents those who are most alive to her foibles 
and her vices from refusing her their praise as a successful 
ruler, whose success was wholly owing to her own high 
statesmanlike qualities. 

So many conspiracies against her had been detected, 
that, in 1584, the chief courtiers formed an association, 
which was joined by great numbers of the leading gentry 
of the kingdom, who signed a document, pledging them¬ 
selves to defend Elizabeth against all injury, and to exclude 
from the throne any one for whose sake injury to her should 
be attempted. Though this document was manifestly aimed 
at Mary, she prudently disclaimed all idea of having pro¬ 
voked it by any conduct of hers, desiring leave to sign it 
herself; and an act of parliament was also brought in, 
framed in accordance with the spirit of the association, 
and also empowering Elizabeth to bring to trial any one 
who should imagine any rebellion against her, or any invasion 
of her kingdom. 

Things were in this state, when, in the beginning of the 
year 1586, a Roman Catholic priest, of the name of Ballard, 
conceived the design of assassinating the queen, which he 
communicated to a Derbyshire gentleman, of the same 
religious persuasion, named Babington, v, T ho entered so 
warmly into the project, that he soon became the chief 
leader of the conspiracy. The plot was formed in Erance; 
but Babington came immediately over to England, with 
letters of recommendation from his friends in Erance to 
Mary, for whom he for some time acted as agent in re¬ 
ceiving and transmitting her foreign correspondence. To 

2 Elizabeth’s jealousy of every one who could possibly have any claim to the 
succession, was shown also in her atrocious cruelty to lady Catharine Grey. 
This lady, who was descended from Mary, duchess of Suffolk, daughter of 
Henry VII., had been secretly married to lord Hertford. Elizabeth committed 
them both as prisoners to the Tower; and finding that their marriage had been 
so hasty and private, that they had not secured proper evidence of its having 
been performed (though at a subsequent period this fact was fully established), 
she caused them to be separated; kept lord Hertford in close confinement till 
his Avife died of a broken heart; and even imprisoned a man who wrote a 
pamphlet in defence of the lady. 


A.D. 

1586. 


328 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

what extent he revealed to her the conspiracy against Eli¬ 
zabeth is uncertain. If the letters produced by Walsing- 
ham were genuine, he disclosed it to her in all its fulness, 
and received her approval of it; nor is there any intrinsic 
improbability in his having done so. On the other hand, 
Mary constantly affirmed that the letters were forgeries; 
and it is almost beyond a doubt that Walsiugham or his 
spies had forged letters in her name to different Eoman 
Catholics, whose presumed disaffection they desired to 
convict of, or perhaps to provoke into, overt acts of treason. 
Babington and Ballard were betrayed, convicted, and exe¬ 
cuted ; and, after long deliberation, Elizabeth determined 
to bring Mary herself to trial under the act of 1584,—a 
resolution, which it is probable that an extraordinary piece 
of imprudence on Mary’s part had as great a share in bring¬ 
ing about as the belief in her guilt. While she was in the 
custody of the earl of Shrewsbury, she was naturally thrown 
much into the society of the countess, a worthless woman, 
who subsequently, for reasons of her own, sought to poison 
Elizabeth’s mind against her; and Mary, in one of her 
moments of irritation at the increased rigour of her con¬ 
finement, which she attributed to the machinations of lady 
Shrewsbury, endeavoured to weaken Elizabeth’s confidence 
in her, by addressing to the queen a letter, in which, under 
pretence of warning her against the countess, she repeated, 
as tales which she herself had received from her, every 
scandalous report to which the favour shown to Leicester 
and Hatton, or her well-known violence of temper had ever 
given rise,—stories which, if false, were likely to exasperate 
so proud and irritable a woman, and, if true, were sure to 
give still more indelible offence. 

A commission was appointed to try Mary, and sent down 
to Eotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, to which she 
had lately been removed. At first she refused to acknow¬ 
ledge its jurisdiction, or to plead to the charges brought 
against her, but was at last persuaded, chiefly by the vice¬ 
chamberlain Hatton, who argued that by no other means 
could she so effectually clear her character from suspicion, 
and also by a letter from Elizabeth herself, to agree to 
appear before the commissioners to vindicate her inno¬ 
cence. 

Trials for treason in those days were not conducted with 
the fairness of our own time; and, the end sought being 


ELIZABETH. 


329 


XXXIV.] 

not the discovery of truth, but the conviction of a supposed a.d. 
enemy, no one prosecuted by the crown ever escaped. Mary 1586# 
was refused the aid of counsel. The witnesses, on whose 
evidence the crown lawyers relied, were not examined in 
her presence, nor had she any opportunity, even had she 
possessed the requisite ability, to cross-examine them. Even 
the letters, alleged to prove her complicity in the projected 
assassination, were not produced, but only copies of them; 
yet, so strong was the defence which, under all these un¬ 
favourable circumstances, she made, that Burleigh, fearing 
the judges would scruple to convict her, interfered himself, 
browbeating both the court and the prisoner in a most 
indecent manner; and even then, dreading the effect of her 
presence, at the end of the second day removed the court 
to Westminster, that the verdict and the sentence might 
be pronounced, when they were no longer under the in¬ 
fluence of the eloquence and unrivalled grace and majesty 
of their destined victim. 

At Westminster, on the 25th of October, the commis- 1587 . 
sioner-s almost unanimously pronounced her guilty; but 
Elizabeth hesitated, or pretended to hesitate, long about 
permitting the sentence to be carried into effect. Before 
the trial Leicester had proposed to procure Mary’s assas¬ 
sination ; and, after its conclusion, both Walsingham and 
Elizabeth endeavoured to induce Paulet to assassinate her, 
an act which he had too much virtue or too much prudence 
to commit. When this expedient failed, Burleigh procured 
from both houses of parliament addresses to Elizabeth, 
begging her to allow Mary’s execution to take place, as the 
only possible means of her own safety. At last she signed 
the death-warrant, and gave it to Davison, her secretary, 
who delivered it to the chancellor, that he might affix the 
great seal to it; and, on the 7th of February, 1587, the 
unhappy Mary was beheaded in a room in Eotheringay 
Castle. She said, probably with perfect truth, that death 
was welcome to her as a relief from her miseries. She 
wrote a dignified letter to Elizabeth, asking no favour for 
herself, but reasonable indulgence and future freedom for 
her faithful servants, and submitted to her fate with a 
mingled cheerfulness and dignity that affected even those 
who bore the principal part in her death. 

Elizabeth had shown herself revengeful and merciless; 
she was now to show herself contemptible. Always a dis- 


330 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


|_CH. 

a.d. sembler, she now outdid any scene of hypocrisy that has 

1587. ever been recorded; not scrupling to ruin her too faithful 
secretary, in order to keep up a pretence which imposed 
upon no human being. She put on mourning for the death 
of Mary as her cousin ; she wrote a long letter to king 
James, in which she called heaven and earth to witness that 
she had never dreamt of consenting to his mother’s death. 
She could not deny that she had signed the fatal warrant, 
but declared that she had never authorized Davison to 
take it to the council; and for this offence she threw him 
into prison, and caused the Star Chamber to inflict a fine 
on him, which reduced him to beggary; yet scarcely two 
months afterwards she created Hatton her chancellor, a 
post for which he had no earthly qualification, but which 
he was supposed to owe partly to the address with which 
he had induced Mary to appear before the commissioners, 
though that was not his original introduction to, nor was 
it believed to be his strongest hold on, the favour of his 
mistress. 

That no one in any way connected with Mary’s affairs 
might escape their full share of disgrace, James contrived 
to exhibit almost as much baseness as Elizabeth herself. 
He had, indeed, when he heard of the sentence passed upon 
his mother, sent ambassadors to Elizabeth, to remonstrate 
against such an invasion of the rights of nations and of 
sovereigns; but one of his envoys, the master of Grey, is 
believed to have betrayed his trust, and to have assured 
Elizabeth that she would find no difficulty in pacifying 
James after the event. If he did, he proved a true prophet. 
James did, indeed, affect a decent indignation for a day or 
two, recalled his ambassador from England, and refused to 
admit the English envoy to his presence ; but in that feeble 
display all his wrath evaporated. It was in vain that his 
nobles put oil mourning; that lord Sinclair appeared at his 
court in complete armour, telling him, with natural high 
spirit, that that was the proper mourning for the murdered 
queen; that others with similar feelings urged him to take 
up arms; and that even the Scottish parliament, a body 
not generally over respectful to their sovereign, assured 
him of their willingness to spend their lives and fortunes 
to enable him to revenge her. He speedily began to repent 
of the boldness of his first measures, so inconsistent with 
the incurable cowardice of his natural disposition; to cal-. 


ELIZABETH. 


331 


XXXV.] 

culate the chances of success if he should engage in war; a.d. 
the risk of injuring his prospect of succession to the English 158 7- 
crown if he should offend Elizabeth ; and finally accepted 
her apologies, and renewed as friendly an intercourse with 
her, showing himself equally destitute of shame, of affection, 
and of courage. 

CHAPTER XXXY. 

ELIZABETH (CONTINUE!)). 

But the event was at hand, which, more than any other, 
has established the fame of Elizabeth with posterity. War 
was not declared between her and Philip, though each had 
committed open hostilities against the other; but in the 
summer of this year she received certain intelligence that 
its declaration would not be long delayed, and that he was 
secretly preparing a large fleet to attack her. She resolved 
to anticipate him, and sent sir Erancis Drake, at the head 
of a naval expedition, to the Spanish coast, with orders to 
attack the Spaniards wherever it should be found practicable 
to do so. It is worth remarking, as illustrative of the 
manner in which armaments were raised in that age, and 
of the poverty of the crown, which was one circumstance 
which prevented it from being too formidable to the liberties 
of the subject, even when the sovereign was of as imperious 
and encroaching a temper as Elizabeth, that, though Drake’s 
fleet consisted of thirty ships, only four of them belonged 
to the queen, the rest being provided by some of the London 
merchants, who expected to be enriched by the booty which 
they would acquire. Drake conducted himself with the 
most enterprising gallantry, and with signal good fortune. 

He attacked the ships lying in the harbour of Cadiz, and 
burnt nearly a hundred of them ; he stormed several strong 
forts on the coast, and by the capture of one or two 
rich merchant vessels abundantly reimbursed those who had 
borne the chief expense of the expedition. 

So important had been the damage which he inflicted, 1588. 
that it delayed the sailing of the fleet, with which Philip 
was preparing to invade England, for a year; and it was 
not till May, 1588, that it prepared to leave the Spanish 
harbours. So formidable an armament had never yet been 
assembled in western Europe, whether we consider the 



332 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. size and complete equipment of the ships, the number and 

1588. quality of the soldiers, veterans proved in the campaigns 
of Alva, Don John, and the duke of Parma, or the renown 
of the commanders, the marquis of Santa Croce, an admiral 
of great experience, and the duke of Parma, the most skilful 
and celebrated general of the age. Before the fleet could 
quit Lisbon Santa Croce died, and was succeeded in his 
command by the duke of Medina Sidonia, a leader, of equal 
courage, but of inferior military reputation. It numbered 
nearly 200 vessels, armed with nearly 3000 guns, convey¬ 
ing 20,000 soldiers, while 34,000 more were encamped in 
Elanders, ready to cross over to the English coast as soon 
as the troops on board the fleet had made good their land¬ 
ing. The pope, Sextus V., issued a fresh bull of excom¬ 
munication against Elizabeth, and announced a plenary 
indulgence, as it was called, for all who should take part 
in the projected invasion of England. The most powerful 
nobles from all quarters of Philip’s vast dominions hastened 
to bear their share in the enterprise; the priests bestowed 
their benediction on it, and on all concerned in it, with more 
than usual pomp; and the nation, in general, as they gazed 
with proud confidence on the vastness of the force, and 
the completeness and splendour of its equipments, gave it 
the name of the Invincible Armada. 

The danger was no doubt great; but it was met by both 
sovereign and people in a spirit befitting its greatness. To 
Elizabeth’s honour she rejected the advice which some of 
her most timid or most designing councillors gave her to 
avenge the insults offered to herself and the nation by the 
pope by increased severity towards the Roman Catholics. 
Her wisdom, gaining clearness from the critical circum¬ 
stances which surrounded her, saw' that it was not by a 
divided people that the impending attack could be re¬ 
pelled ; and, for once, regardless of religious differences, 
she threw herself on the loyalty of the whole nation, with 
a generous confidence which was nobly repaid. She did 
not neglect to strengthen her alliances with the Protestant 
states of the Continent, and with those other powers, who 
had reason to dread any increase to the dominion of the 
Spaniard; but her main trust was in her own people. She 
felt, with the great poet of her reign, that— 

“ Nought can make us rue, 

If England to herself do prove but true; ” 


XXXV.] ELIZABETH. 333 

and 'with English arms alone she proposed to grapple with 
the coming foe. The royal navy consisted of but twenty- 
eight ships; but the gentry and merchants of the kingdom 
eagerly contributed others, till they raised the entire fleet 
to the number of 100 sail. In size and equipment they 
were still more inferior than in number; but their com¬ 
mander, lord Howard of Effingham, was a nobleman of high 
reputation, and his vice-admirals, Drake, Hawkins, and 
Erobisher, were the most skilful and enterprising sailors in 
Europe. Sixty, ships, under these leaders, lay at the en¬ 
trance of the Channel, while forty more, under lord Seymour, 
watched Dunkirk, to intercept the duke of Parma. The 
land army was equal, or perhaps superior in number 
to that of the enemy, but very inferior in experience and 
skill, and still more in the character of their commanders. 
Lord Hunsdon, indeed, to whom was committed a body of 
34,000 men, reserved as a guard for the queen, who had 
determined to hasten in person to the first point where 
the enemy should appear, was a veteran who had won an 
honourable name on the Scottish border; but the most 
important force of 23,000 men, stationed at Tilbury, in 
Essex, for the defence of the metropolis (since it was on 
that coast that Parma was likely to attempt his descent), 
was, to the great discontent of the people, and the lasting 
disgrace of the queen, entrusted to Leicester, whom she 
had lately been forced to recal in disgrace from his com¬ 
mand in Holland, where his political and military incom¬ 
petency had been aggravated by misconduct, which threw 
considerable doubts even on his personal courage. So in¬ 
extricable were the bonds in which this bad man had 
entangled her, that she thus showed herself unable to refuse 
his demands, even when the safety ol her kingdom was at 
stake. Happily no opportunity was afforded him of again 
measuring himself with the duke of Parma. The Spanish 
fleet set sail on the 29th of May, but the next day was 
attacked by a violent storm, which sank several of the 
smaller vessels, and compelled the rest to take shelter in 
Vigo Bay. The queen, on receiving the news, concluding 
that the expedition was postponed, at once sent orders to 
lord Howard to disband the greater portion of the fleet; 
but he, with better judgment and a more liberal spirit, 
disobeyed her command, offering rather to pay the seamen 
himself than to dismiss them at such a crisis; and it was 


A.D. 

1588. 


334 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. well that he did so. Before the end of June the Armada 

1588. a g a i n se t sail, and in the middle of July arrived in the 
Channel. Philip’s plan was that it should proceed along 
the Erench coast, till it reached Dunkirk, where it should 
effect a junction with the duke of Parma, and convoy him 
and his army to the Thames. But, fortunately, the duke 
de Medina, hearing of Elizabeth’s orders, but not of lord 
Howard’s disobedience, was led to believe that he had a 
favourable opportunity of attacking the dismantled fleet 
at Plymouth, and bore up for that port. Lord Howard 
heard of his approach in time to reach the open sea; and 
the delays that had retarded the Spaniards had given time 
for so many reinforcements to join him, that in numbers 
his fleet was nearly equal to that of the enemy. It was 
still vastly inferior in weight of metal, and in the size of 
the ships; but the seamen who had served under Drake, 
had already learnt that large ships were more formidable 
in appearance than in reality. The science of ship-building 
was then in its infancy, that of seamanship was almost 
equally so; and the vessels of the Spaniards could neither 
sail as quickly nor answer the helm as readily as the lighter 
ships of the English, while their increased height carried 
the Spanish shot over the English fleet, making them at 
the same time a better mark for the aim of the English 
gunners. 

It was an imposing spectacle that the Armada presented 
as it advanced in a huge crescent, seven miles long, in full 
confidence of an easy victory. Lord Howard prudently 
declined a close engagement, but kept up a running and 
distant fight with such success, that one of the largest 
vessels took fire, another was disabled, both were captured; 
and as he gave them no respite, but harassed them with 
incessant attacks as they advanced up the Channel, their 
numbers, their condition, and their spirits were greatly 
diminished before they reached Calais. There they found 
that the duke of Parma refused to join them, looking upon 
such a step as the certain ruin of his own army, since it 
was plain that the English were the masters of the sea. 
Lord Howard continued his attacks; and had not his 
ammunition been exhausted, he would have compelled the 
whole Armada to surrender. As it was he forced it to 
proceed along the eastern coast of the island in its endea¬ 
vour to return to Spain, where it encountered such severe 


ELIZABETH. 


335 


XXXV.] 

weather, that numbers of the vessels were wrecked among a.b. 
the isles on the Scottish coast, and it was comparatively 1588 * 
only a small number that ever reached again their native 
harbours, to deter their countrymen from any similar at¬ 
tempt by representations of the skill and valour of the 
English sailors, and of the stormy seas which helped to 
defend their rocky shores. 

The next year the queen summoned a parliament, which 1589. 
in its joy at the late successes, granted her a largely in¬ 
creased subsidy; but displeased her, and incurred her severe 
rebuke for interfering with what she looked upon as her 
prerogative, in attempting to limit what was called purvey¬ 
ance, a custom (which had long been thought an intolerable 
grievance) by which the officers of the crown could at 
pleasure take provisions for the household, and make use of 
any means of conveyance which they could find, at a price 
greatly inferior to the value of the article taken. And the 
rebukes to which the parliament was subject were not con¬ 
fined to those administered by the queen, or by the minister, 
speaking in her name; but powerful nobles and courtiers 
at times presumed upon their favour to imitate her exam¬ 
ple, till, on a member, sir Edward Hobby, complaining to 
the house of commons, that he had been reproved by a 
certain “great personage,” for a speech delivered by him 
in parliament, the house passed a resolution forbidding, as a 
breach of its privileges, any revelation of what took place 
within its walls. This was the origin of that celebrated 
prohibition of the parliamentary debates, which for a hun¬ 
dred years w r as cherished by both houses as their best de¬ 
fence against the undue interference and tyranny of the 
crown; which was preserved for nearly another century as a 
screen to conceal their general corruption, but which, though 
still existing unrepealed upon their records, now that cor¬ 
ruption is rare, and the tyranny of the crown extinct, has 
become practically inoperative, and is only allowed to exist 
because there is no chance of its ever being enforced. 

We may pass rapidly over the last years of Elizabeth’s 1590- 
reign. The enmity excited by the Armada induced her to 1595. 
assist an attempt by Don Antonio, one of the ancient royal 
family of Portugal, though illegitimate, to recover the throne * 
of his fathers ; an event only remarkable as the first in which 
the young earl of Essex displayed his rising talents, which, 
when Henrv III. of Erance was assassinated, in 1590, and 


A.D. 

1590- 
1595. 


J595- 

1000. 


336 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

when Elizabeth determined to send Henry IY. a force to 
aid him against the league, procured him the command, 
though the skill of the duke of Parma, who was sent to the 
assistance of the league, prevented him from succeeding in, 
or from deriving any credit from, the expedition. 

In the latter years of her reign she made greater en¬ 
croachments than ever on the freedom of parliament; bid¬ 
ding the members recollect that their privilege of speech did 
not convey a right of discussing whatever they pleased, 
“their privilege was aye or no;” and even imprisoning 
some who disputed the authority of such a prohibition. 
Nor was it till 1601, after several years of unauthorized 
domination on her part, and resistance, sometimes feeble, 
and sometimes pertinacious, on the part of the commons, 
that she w r as compelled to yield on a point above all others 
important to the prosperity of the nation, and almost equally 
so in her eyes to her own prerogative, the power of granting 
monopolies. 

The persecution of the Homan Catholics was relaxed, but 
that of the Puritans waxed fiercer. The parliament of 1593 
enacted the infliction of the severest penalties upon every 
one above the age of sixteen, who absented himself from 
church for an entire month; and though, in the letter, this 
act affected both classes of sectarians equally, in practice it 
was only put in force against the latter. 

Her operations against the Spaniards met with but a 
chequered success. Drake failed in attempts upon Porto 
Bello, and upon Panama; and though Essex, Ealeigh, and 
lord Thomas Howard took Cadiz, the advantage which they 
reaped from the undertaking fell far short of the damage 
which they inflicted upon the city; and a second expedition, 
under Essex, intended to attack Eerrol, and to intercept the 
fleet which arrived once a year from America and the West 
Indies, failed in almost every particular. 

In 1598 Burleigh died, having, as his last public act, 
just concluded a very advantageous treaty with the united 
states ol the Netherlands; he had also been very anxious to 
persuade his mistress to make peace with Spain, which she, 
thinking the profit to be reaped from the continuance of the 
war much greater than the risk to which she was herself 
exposed, refused to do; being also partly influenced in her 
determination by Essex, who was eager for an opportunity 
of acquiring military glory. Leicester had died soon after 


ELIZABETH. 


337 


XXXV.] 

the defeat of the Armada, and Elizabeth had given a singu¬ 
lar specimen of the mean covetousness which had always 
been a marked feature in her character, by seizing some of 
his goods for money due to her exchequer. Hatton, who 
was generally believed to have had an almost equal share of 
her favour, was also dead; having actually died of a broken 
heart in consequence of her treatment of him, dictated by the 
same spirit. When very young he had got involved in debt, 
and the queen had lent him a sum of money to deliver him 
from his embarrassments. She had also enriched him in 
various ways, even compelling the bishop of Ely to make 
over to him a valuable piece of land belonging to his see, by 
the threat of depriving him of his bishopric if he refused. 
Hatton had looked on these unwonted instances of generosity 
as gifts, but Elizabeth had no intention of not being repaid; 
and, when he had been chancellor three years, she demanded 
that he should discharge all his debts to her. It was in 
vain that he represented that he had as yet been unable 
to accumulate a sufficient sum, and implored her to grant 
him further time; she refused to wait, and actually ordered 
the attorney-general to proceed against him on his bond. 
Her unexpected severity had such an effect upon him that 
he became seriously ill; and then she repented, and repaired 
to his house to nurse him, warming his broth, and taking it 
to him herself while he lay in bed, but her returning kind¬ 
ness could not efface the recollection of her displeasure, and 
in the winter of 1591 he died. 

Essex succeeded for a while to even more than the influ¬ 
ence which either Leicester or Hatton had enjoyed. Though 
Elizabeth was now nearly seventy years old, the words of 
fulsome flattery and gallantry were as acceptable as ever to 
her ear; and Essex’s eager ambition prompted him to gratify 
her to the utmost, though his high spirit at times endan¬ 
gered the continuance of her favour. Her violence of temper 
had often given rise to strange scenes in her court, though 
the mean subservience of her former favourites had made 
them submit with patience to whatever affronts she put 
upon them ; and she had collared one, kicked another, and 
spit in the face of a third, without exciting the slightest 
appearance of discontent on their part; but Essex was of a 
different character, and, when on one occasion she forgot 
herself so far as to give him a blow, he withdrew from court, 
openly stating that he was not “like Solomon’s fool, to 

z 


A.D. 

1600— 

1003. 


338 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. laugh when he was stricken,” and that he would not place 
K,00 himself again in a situation where he was exposed to such 
indignities. After a time, however, he was reconciled to 
the queen; she gave him a ring, promising that, if ever he 
again fell into disgrace and sent her that ring, the sight of 
it should restore him to her favour; and, as the rebellious 
state of Ireland seemed to open to him a field of distinction, 
she, at his own request, sent him thither as her governor, 
with greater authority than had ever been conferred on any 
former lord-lieutenant. He entirely failed in the objects 
which he had been expected to carry out. He was bold and 
enterprising, but his unsuspicious temper made him a mark 
for designing men; he became first the tool of the pretended 
friends of the English connexion, and then the dupe of his 
enemies, while his troops wasted their strength in ill-advised 
and unimportant expeditions, and became also attacked with 
disease. 

Elizabeth was highly displeased, and her displeasure was 
artfully increased by sir Robert Cecil, Burleigh’s son, and 
successor in her councils, and by sir Walter Raleigh, a man 
of great genius but of no principles, and who had long stood 
high in her favour. Essex, always impetuous, determined, 
in spite of the express orders which he received from her to 
remain in Ireland, to come to England and justify himself 
in person; and hastening across to London, without waiting 
to change his dress, forced his way into her bedroom, and 
insisted on being allowed to vindicate himself from the 
charges of his enemies. At the first moment of surprise 
she received him graciously; but, on further consideration, 
she changed this behaviour, and that same day committed 
him to the custody of the chancellor. As Hatton had done 
before, Essex took to his bed, and then Elizabeth began to 
relent, sent him broth and kind messages, with tears in her 
eyes, that she would herself have come to see him had it 
consisted with her honour. However, as it was clear that 
he had greatly misconducted affairs in Ireland, she recalled 
his commission, and sent Mountjoy thither in his place, who 
speedily put down the rebellion, and restored her authority 
over the greater part of the island. 

Mountjoy’s success provoked her further against Essex, 
and at last she had him brought before the council, who 
deprived him of some of his offices, and ordered him to 
be kept in confinement. His submission, however, procured 


ELIZABETH. 


339 


XXXV.] 

him his liberty, though not as yet his restoration to his 
mistress’s favour; and when, on the expiration of a monopoly 
which had been granted to him, she refused to renew it, his 
discontent mastered his prudence so far that he indulged 
in all sorts of contemptuous expressions respecting her, 
some of them of such a character as she could least forgive : 
that she was an old woman, and that she was as crooked in 
her mind as in her body; he offended her almost equally by 
attempts to gain the favour of James, as her successor; ail 
which were carefully reported to her by his enemies ; and 
at last, as her chief ministers were treating with the 
Spaniards with a view to a peace, which was very unpopular 
with the nation in general, he broke out into open insurrec¬ 
tion, sallying forth into the street at the head of a body of 
armed men, with whose aid he designed to make himself 
master of the palace, and to compel the queen to dismiss his 
enemies, and to restore himself to her favour. But his de¬ 
sign was already known; the citizens, on his popularity 
•with whom he had confidently reckoned for aid, refused to 
join him ; he found the streets barricaded, and was forced to 
surrender. He was immediately brought to trial; the case 
was clear against him, but it -was exaggerated to its utmost 
height by Erancis Bacon, the son of the former lord keeper, 
and at a later period himself chancellor of England ; who, 
though he "was a nephew of lord Burleigh, had owed his 
rise chiefly to the munificent kindness and steady protection 
of Essex; but who now, seeing his disgrace, was not 
ashamed to prostitute his unrivalled genius to ensure the 
destruction of his patron. Essex was condemned to death ; 
but Elizabeth hesitated long before she would allow the 
sentence to be carried into execution; at last, provoked at 
his refusing, as she believed, to sue for mercy, she signed 
the fatal warrant, and he was beheaded in the Tower, at the 
beginning of the year 1001. 

The next was a prosperous year. Henry IY. had medi¬ 
tated coming to England for a conference with Elizabeth, to 
whom he was under great obligations, and of whose wisdom 
and political capacity he had conceived a high idea; and, 
when he was obliged to relinquish that design, he sent his 
favourite minister Sully in his place, with whom she dis¬ 
cussed a project which she had formed of establishing a 
lasting balance of power in Europe, though the time was 
hardly come for the execution of her plans; and who has re- 


A.D. 

1600 — 

1603. 


340 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. corded his opinion that her genius for government, and her po- 
1600— Htical discernment were not at all over-estimated. In Ireland, 
1603 ‘ Mountjoy, bv a happy mixture of vigour and prudence, had 
at last completely subdued the whole island; and had com¬ 
pelled Tyrone, the leader of the rebels, to surrender; while 
in England, she had gained the affection of her parliament 
more than ever, by abandoning the monopolies against which 
they had so long struggled. 

But all this success was more than neutralized by the 
discovery that Essex, whom she had constantly lamented, 
had not been as obstinate as she had been led to fancy. 
The ring, which, as has been mentioned, she had given him, 
he had sent to her by the countess of Nottingham, who, to 
ensure his destruction, retained it in her own hands ; but 
who now, being on her deathbed, revealed to Elizabeth the 
treachery of which she had been guilty, imploring her for¬ 
giveness. Full of anger and bitter sorrow, the queen re¬ 
plied, that God might pardon her, but that she never could. 
She gave way to an uncurable melancholy, which speedily 
reduced her to such a state that her life was despaired of; 
and on the 24th of March, 1603, she died, in the seventieth 
year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign, having, in reply 
to the questions of her councillors, intimated by signs, for she 
was unable to speak, that she wished the king of Scotland 
to be her successor, as her nearest kinsman, and lawful heir. 

As a ruler of a kingdom, Elizabeth has always enjoyed 
a very high reputation, and justly ; for most of the qualities 
which contribute to the success of government and to the 
happiness of a people she had in perfection, so that they 
did not degenerate into that excess which becomes vicious 
or dangerous. She was prudent, without timidity; bold, 
without rashness; firm, without obstinacy. The circum¬ 
stances under which she came to the throne were in 
the highest degree fortunate for her reputation, compel¬ 
ling her, as they did, to espouse the Protestant doctrines, 
and gradually to put herself forward as the head of the 
Protestant interest in Europe. In this position, by the 
happy combination of the qualities above mentioned, she es¬ 
tablished the reformed religion securely in her dominions ; 
defeated the formidable attempts of Philip to destroy her; 
and preserved to her people the blessings of long' peace 
and of constantly increasing prosperity. Even her faults 
were, in some instances, rather beneficial to the nation than 


ELIZABETH. 


341 


XXXV.] 

otherwise. Her cruel and revengeful disposition led her 
into the great crimes of the murder of Mary and the perse¬ 
cution of the Eoman Catholics; but the former certainly 
contributed to the tranquillity of the kingdom during the 
latter years of her reign ; and the latter would seem, how¬ 
ever unusual such a result may be, to have had, in some 
degree, a similar effect, striking terror rather than increas¬ 
ing discontent; so that, at the time of the Armada, the 
Iioman Catholics were afraid to show any disaffection to the 
government, even in favour of a prince who came avowedly 
to re-establish their religion in its pristine superiority. 

Her parsimonious meanness, the most unroyal of failings, 
was also beneficial to her subjects, by enabling her to dis¬ 
pense with laying on them the heavy burdens of her prede¬ 
cessors ; and, therefore, suffering them to direct their wealth 
to channels more conducive to their private, and, by conse¬ 
quence, to the national prosperity. 

Towards individuals she frequently displayed a degree of 
tyrannical cruelty which nothing can excuse; and the 
common use of torture, which is said, on good authority, to 
have been more frequent in this reign, than in those of all 
her predecessors put together, was chiefly owing to her own 
predilection for it, and to her personal demand for its appli¬ 
cation even to persons suspected, on the slightest ground, of 
the most trivial offences. 

Having the same despotic disposition as her father, she 
was continually endeavouring to extend her prerogatives 
at the expense of the constitution ; but, as has already been 
said, as often as her encroachments provoked the resolute 
opposition of the commons, she gave way, never being so 
rash as to commit the crown to a contest in which defeat 
was probable, while victory could produce no honour to 
make amends for the disaffection which it must inevitably 
create. 

Such was Elizabeth as a sovereign. As a woman she must 
be regarded in a widely different light. With none of the ex¬ 
cellences which render her sex amiable and attractive, she 
had all the defects which sometimes render it degraded and 
contemptible. Though violent-tempered, she was utterly 
devoid of candour and sincerity; preposterously vain, she was 
the slave of a love of flattery and gallantry so insatiable, that, 
even when past the middle age, she sacrificed the lives of her 
soldiers, and risked the safety of her kingdom to gratify the 


A.D. 

1600 — 

1603. 


342 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. ambition of the incapable and worthless, but handsome and 
1G03 cour tly Leicester; and allowed Hatton to sport with the 
rights and property of the people because he was skilful at 
pouring into her still willing ear whispers of fulsome adula¬ 
tion and hypocritical attachment. 

The last century exhibited a somewhat similar contrast 
between the sovereign and the man, in the person of Frederic 
the Great. He too raised his kingdom to a high pitch of 
glory and power by his eminent qualities as a ruler, though 
here in some respects Elizabeth has the advantage of him, 
since her ambition never led her into aggressive war, and 
her prudence preserved her from such misfortunes as 
Frederic displayed his genius and heroism in retrieving. 
Eut Frederic himself, in his vain appetite for literary dis¬ 
tinction, to which he had no earthly pretensions; in his in¬ 
terchange of childish panegyrics with one author, in his still 
more childish and unkingly disputes with another, in his 
eagerness for Voltaire’s praises, and his close calculation of 
what they were to cost him, cannot appear more ridiculous 
than Elizabeth when displaying her scanty accomplishments 
before one ambassador, trying to wring comn^iments to her 
beauty out of another, cuffing one lover beforener court, and 
suing another for the repayment of loans for which he 
might fairly have considered she had received sufficient value 
in his well-judged compliments and assiduous attentions. 

However, it is with her public character that the historian 
is concerned ; and, though it is impossible to respect or to 
like the woman, still he who looks on her solely as a 
sovereign, must admit that she, under whom pure religion 
was established throughout her kingdom, foreign foes were 
successfully repelled and retaliated upon, and foreign allies 
efficiently supported, under whom the nation advanced in 
prosperity at home, in reputation abroad, and in the ap¬ 
preciation and in the enjoyment of its liberties, deserves to 
be ranked very high among the greatest benefactors of their 
species, the wise rulers of mighty nations. 


XXXVI.] 


JAMES I. 


343 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


JAMES I. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Rodolph. 

Matthias . . .1612 

Ferdinand II. . 1619 


France, a.d. 
Henry IV. 

Louis XIII. . 1610 
Spain. 

Philip III. 

Philip IV. .1621 


Popes. A.D. 
Clement VIII. 

Leo XI. ... 1605 
Paul V. . . .1608 

Gregory XV. . 1621 


The accession of James, the sixth king of Scotland and the a.d. 
first of England who bore that name, was hailed with entire 1603. 
unanimity by his new subjects; as he was undoubtedly the 
nearest male heir of Henry VIII., though that sovereign, 
having been empowered by his parliament to arrange the 
succession as he pleased, had, by his will, postponed the de¬ 
scendants of his elder sister, Margaret, the queen of Scotland, 
to those of his youngest sister, Mary. And, as Elizabeth’s 
popularity had been greatly on the wane during the last year 
or two; partiy because of the execution of Essex, who had 
been the idol of the people; partly because of the increased 
taxation, which had been very oppressive; and partly also 
because of her severity to the Puritans, who were rapidly 
rising in numbers and influence ; the nation in general was 
desirous of a change, and disposed to hope much from, and 
to pay a cheerful allegiance to, the new monarch. 

He was now thirty-six years of age, and had been married 
several years to Anne, daughter of the king of Denmark, by 
whom he had three children: Henry, prince of Wales, who 
died a few years afterwards ; Elizabeth, afterwards married 
to the elector palatine; and Charles, duke of York, who 
succeeded him on the throne. 

At the beginning of April he set out for his new kingdom, 
and all along his road he was met by the noblemen and 
gentry of the different counties, eager to pay their homage, 
and to testify their loyalty by suitable presents; but 
before he reached the metropolis, he had fallen greatly in 
the general estimation. He had what to the vulgar eye is 
perhaps the greatest, what at all events is the most readily 
discoverable of imperfections, he did not look like a king. 
Elizabeth’s faults had been neither light nor few, but at 




344 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. least she had played her part with great majesty; and even 

I0U3. those who bore her tyrannical pretensions with the greatest 
impatience, or who viewed her amorous coquetry or petulant 
ill-temper with the greatest contempt, were yet awed in her 
presence by her generally majestic deportment, and shrunk 
into submission when confronted with her haughty displea¬ 
sure, or still more imposing condescension. Par different 
was the appearance of James. Dirty in his habits, ungainly in 
his demeanour, a buffoon, and a coward, Europe had seen 
no ruler less fit to rule a wealthy, an ambitious, and an able 
nobility, a gentry rapidly rising to a proper sense of their in¬ 
dependence, and a commonalty beginning to learn their im¬ 
portance, their right to freedom, and their power to vindi¬ 
cate it. To make matters worse, he had imbibed, it is hard 
to say where or how, the most exaggerated notions of the 
kingly prerogatives, and as firm a determination as he was 
capable of to assert them on every occasion. 

Indeed he had already, in a treatise which he had published 
some years before in Scotland, promulgated very high notions 
concerning the proper authority of princes, whom he ex¬ 
pressly stated to be “above the law,” and his whole reign 
exhibited a series of attempts to put those notions in prac¬ 
tice. Even before he reached London he showed his con¬ 
tempt for the much-valued principle of trial by jury, by 
causing a pickpocket to be hanged at Newark without a 
trial. In his very first parliament he endeavoured to assume 
a control over the election of the members of the lower 
house ; from which their steady resistance forced him to 
recede. Soon afterwards, he proceeded to regulate taxes 
already granted, and to impose new taxes by his sole 
authority, and again, though supported in his attempt by 
the barons of the exchequer, he was forced to abandon this 
pretension also. He then claimed a right of issuing pro¬ 
clamations, prohibiting various practices of so insignificant 
a character, such, for instance, as that of making starch 
from wheat, that his real object would seem to have been to 
establish his right, in order to exercise it in matters of more 
importance; but again the commons remonstrated, and the 
judges appointed to consider the question, at the head 
of whom was chief justice Coke, the greatest lawyer that at 
that time had ever appeared, unanimously decided that he 
had no such power. James tried in vain to intimidate the 
commons; at one time tearing leaves from their journals 


JAMES I. 


345 


XXXVI.] 

with his own hands; at another, even committing to prison a.d. 
some of the members who had been most forward in their 1603 - 
resistance to his encroachments; till at last, in 1621, his 
manifest determination to render himself independent of 
his parliament, which he had not assembled for upwards of 
six years, his attempts to browbeat the judges, who did not, 
as yet, hold their offices on any other tenure than the king’s 
pleasure, his dismissal of Coke, and the increased promi¬ 
nence which he was daily giving to the unconstitutional 
authority of the Star Chamber, drove several of the peers to 
take part with the commons; and, though they only formed 
a minority in the upper house, yet the fact of any of their 
class ranging themselves formally on the side of the people 
against the king, was an irresistible proof of the folly of the 
line of conduct which he had adopted, and a fearfully signifi¬ 
cant indication of the character which a contest between the 
two parties would assume, if the sovereign should be so ill 
advised as to continue to provoke one. 

He made a judicious selection of his advisers, by continuing 
Cecil, whom he shortly after created lord Salisbury, in his 
office of secretary of state, and the earl of Dorset in that of 
lord treasurer: and, while these two able men lived, their 
prudence served in some degree to curb and to moderate his 
arbitrary petulance ; and, though they were unable to keep 
him within the strict bounds of the constitution, they re¬ 
strained him from the violent measures, and displays of im¬ 
potent resentment, to which he afterwards gave way, when 
wholly under the control of worthless favourites. 

The powers on the Continent, in whose eyes the character 
and conduct of Elizabeth had certainly greatly raised the 
reputation and influence of England, naturally looked with 
great anxiety for indications of the disposition and future 
policy of her successor, and sent ambassadors ostensibly to 
congratulate him on his accession, but in reality to sound his 
views, and to form new, or to continue the old alliances with 
England. The ambassador who prevailed was the celebrated 
Eosni, better known by his later title of the duke de Sully, 
the confidential minister of Henry IY. of Erance, who hoped 
to find James inclined to aid in carrying out the lofty plans 
which in his former visit to England he had discussed with 
Elizabeth; but who, finding such conduct neither suited to 
the abilities nor to the inclinations of the new sovereign, 
was forced to content himself with a treaty of a less com- 


316 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. prehensive nature, which, however, strengthened the barrier 

1603. w hi c h it was the constant object of Henry’s policy to raise 
np against the power of Spain, by binding both princes to 
unite in the defence of the united states of Holland, aiding 
them with money, and, if necessary, with troops likewise, to 
establish their independence. 

If Janies could have regulated his conduct solely by his 
own wishes, he would probably have refused to be a party to 
such a treaty, for he was disposed to be friendly to Spain, 
and he had more than once pronounced the Dutch to be 
rebels; but the unanimous feeling of the nation was so 
strongly in their favour that he could not venture to abandon 
them, though he comforted himself by terminating the war 
with Spain; so that, before the end of the year 1604, the 
country was in the enjoyment of universal peace, which was 
maintained with but slight interruption during the whole 
reign. 

He was not at first so fortunate in securing domestic 
tranquillity. The very year of his accession was disturbed 
by a conspiracy formed by some Roman Catholic priests, and 
entered into by lords G-rey, Cobham,and sir Walter Raleigh, 
the objects of which are hidden in obscurity, though one of 
them appears to have been the placing on the throne the 
lady Arabella Stuart, a cousin of James, like him descended 
from Henry VIII., and thought by many to have a preferable 
claim to the throne, as having been born in England, while 
James bv birth was an alien. The plot was discovered, the 
priests were executed ; Raleigh also was convicted of treason, 
though even in that age, when the principles of justice were 
so little understood, his conviction was thought illegal, as 
resting on the evidence of a single witness. He was re¬ 
prieved, but detained in prison for twelve years, till he pur¬ 
chased his liberty, but not his pardon, of the favourite 
Buckingham. 

A more formidable conspiracy was discovered two years 
later, known as the Gunpowder Plot, almost unequalled in 
its atrocity, if we regard the number of the victims intended 
to be sacrificed, and in its singularity, if we consider the 
length of time that it was in contemplation, the nearness of 
its accomplishment, and the number of persons to whom it 
was communicated without the slightest suspicion being 
awakened, till the fortunate compunction of one of the con¬ 
spirators betrayed it at the last moment. The Roman 


JAMES I. 


347 


XXXVI.] 

Catholics had become greatly exasperated at finding James, 
from whom they expected greater indulgence, determined to 
persevere in the rigorous measures which had been adopted 
towards them by the late queen; and a gentleman named 
Catesby, who had but lately abandoned the reformed re¬ 
ligion, and who disgraced both forms alike by his profligacy, 
inspired with all the zeal of a convert, conceived the idea of 
proving the sincerity of his conversion by the destruction of 
those whom he had forsaken. He communicated his project 
to Percy, a kinsman of the house of Northumberland, to a 
Jesuit named Garnet, and among others to an English offi¬ 
cer in the Spanish service, Guy Eawkes, whose name is, 
above all others, identified in the popular memory with the 
transaction. In the spring of 1604 they hired a house 
adjoining the house of parliament, and large vaults, which 
had been previously occupied by a coal merchant, and Avere 
exactly under the house of lords, which they gradually filled 
with barrels of gunpowder. The meeting of the parliament 
was fixed for the 5th of November, 1605. The king, queen, 
and prince of Wales Avere expected to be present; and as 
soon as the members of both houses were fully collected, the 
train was to be fired, and the whole assembly destroyed in a 
moment. The king, his consort, and his heir, the powerful 
and gallant nobles, the fearless commons, the wise and ho¬ 
noured ministers, the learned judges, the pious prelates, were 
at once to be swept from the land. As the duke of York, 
from his tender age, was not expected to be present, Percy 
undertook to assassinate him at the same time; and the 
princess Elizabeth, who was in Warwickshire, was to be 
seized by sir Edward Digby, and proclaimed queen. It was 
inevitable that many Roman Catholics would be involved in 
the massacre; but Garnet had silenced the scruples of 
those who feared to confound the innocent with the guilty, 
and the day for the execution of the plot rapidly approached, 
when one of those who had been latest admitted to a know¬ 
ledge of the conspiracy, a Northamptonshire squire of the 
name of Tresham, whose brother-in-law was lord Monteagle, 
a Roman Catholic peer, sent him an anonymous letter, warn¬ 
ing him to absent himself from the ensuing ceremony, since 
“ God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of 
the time,” and the chief offenders “ should receive a terrible 
blow this parliament, and yet not see who hurt them.” 
Monteagle laid the letter before the council, and, after 


A.D. 

1604. 


348 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dl. 

a.d. repeated deliberations as to its purport, James, or more pro- 

1G05. batdy Cecil (though he was too good a courtier to refuse 
his master the credit of the suggestion), suspected that some 
contrivance by gunpowder was designated. It was resolved 
to search the vaults beneath the house of parliament, and 
the investigation took place on the 4th of November. The 
quantity of fagots with which the gunpowder was covered 
up excited suspicion; and, on the search being repeated the 
next morning before daybreak, Fawkes himself was dis¬ 
covered completing his preparations for the firing of the 
train. Catesby and the other conspirators fled the moment 
that they heard of his arrest, and joined Digby in War¬ 
wickshire. The sheriffs of the different counties pursued 
them, and they took refuge in ITolbech House, in Stafford¬ 
shire, resolving there to endeavour to defend themselves. 
But in a sally Catesby and Percy were killed, the rest w r ere 
overpowered, and taken prisoners. On their trials there 
appeared reason to believe that both the king of Spain and 
the pope were privy to the conspiracy; but James was so 
unwilling to offend Philip that he prevented any especial 
notice being taken of their accession to it. The prisoners 
were convicted and executed; and some noblemen also were 
prosecuted before the Star Chamber, and subjected to enor¬ 
mous fines, on suspicion of having been acquainted with the 
plot, though such suspicions were wliolly unsupported by 
evidence. 

The Puritans did not obtain any greater relaxation of 
Elizabeth’s penal law r s than the Boman Catholics; indeed, 
they were even less in favour with James, who had had 
abundant reasou while in Scotland to dread the intolerant 
spirit which actuated them, and who could never endure 
their objections to the episcopal authority, with which he 
considered the regal dignity almost identified. “No king, 
no bishop,” was one of his favourite sayings; on his jour¬ 
ney from Scotland to London a petition, from a very con¬ 
siderable number of the clergy favourable to the puritan 
doctrines, had been presented to him; but he committed 
some of those who presented it to prison, as if it had been a 
seditious document; and, when he afterwards summoned 
some of them to meet himself and some of the bishops and 
High Church divines in a conference at Hampton Court, he 
treated them with such severity that they saw that they had 
no indulgence to expect from him, and began even to look 


JAMES I. 


349 


XXXVI.] 

•upon Elizabeth as a comparatively indulgent enemy. His a.d. 
disinclination to them was heightened by the conduct of the 
High Church clergy, who began to inculcate doctrines of 
the most slavish obedience, declaring the king’s power to be 
of Divine origin, and, as such, uncontrollable and infinite; 
thus agreeing with his own views when he pronounced it as 
manifest sedition to question the extent of the authority of 
a king, as it would be blasphemy to seek to limit the power 
of Grod. 

James was very desirous to promote the union of his two 
kingdoms, and the Scottish parliament cordially supported 
the proposition; but, in England, though the new solicitor- 
general, sir Erancis Bacon, supported it in a speech of 
unusual eloquence and wisdom, the national antipathy which 
the people bore the Scots, and which had been greatly in¬ 
creased during the present reign by jealousy of the royal 
favour, which was supposed to be shown to them in an 
undue proportion, prevailed to cause the rejection of the 
measure. A century later it was brought forward with 
better success, though then it was opposed by many of the 
most influential Scotchmen; and it has proved productive 
of great benefits to both countries, as perhaps, in the inter¬ 
val, it would have saved both from more than one severe 
calamity, and one of them at least from a grievous and 
shameful crime. 

Another judicious and desirable proposal met with similar 1G07. 
ill fortune. Prices had been gradually rising throughout 
the kingdom, while the royal revenue had not only not in¬ 
creased in like proportion, but many ancient sources of that 
revenue, arising from the relics of the feudal system, or 
from old and now obsolete notions of the rights of the royal 
prerogative, had been wholly cut off; so that the sovereign 
had no longer the funds necessary for the maintenance of 
bis personal dignity and constitutional importance; indeed 
the ordinary annual expense exceeded the ordinary annual 
revenue by no less a sum than 80,000/. To remedy this, 

Cecil, who, on the death of Dorset, had become lord trea¬ 
surer, proposed that the king should for the future give up 
the feudal rights and prerogatives which his predecessors 
had exercised, and receive from the commons instead a fixed 
income adequate to his legitimate expenses, which, by mu¬ 
tual consent, was fixed at 200,000/. How desirable such a 
measure would have been is seen in the fact that it has now 


350 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.T>. been long adopted with the best effects ; but it failed at the 
1607. time, either from the difficulty of arranging how such a sum 
was to be levied, or, more probably, from a jealousy of ren¬ 
dering the sovereign, and especially such a sovereign as 
James, too independent of his subjects. 

In Ireland the measures of the crown had better success. 
Mountjoy, the lord deputy, had, as has been mentioned, put 
down the long-existing rebellious spirit w r ith great energy 
and prudence. Many of those most hostile to the English 
authority, and Tyrone among them, had fled to the Conti¬ 
nent, and by their flight and the outlawry of others the 
greater part of Ulster had become forfeited to the crown. 
1610. The lands thus acquired were distributed partly among 
natives of the country, partly among adventurers from Eng¬ 
land and Scotland, who brought their capital and skill to 
aid in the cultivation of what had previously been little 
better than a land of savages ; English laws were gradually 
substituted for Irish customs, and thus greater advances 
towards the civilization of the country were made in a few 
years than in the centuries which had elapsed since Henry II. 
first became its king. 

In 1611 Henry, prince of Wales, died, who is described 
as having been a youth of high spirit and of most pro¬ 
mising abilities ; and the next year the king lost his minister, 
Salisbury, whose death made way for the ascendancy of 
worthless favourites, whose follies and crimes brought con¬ 
tempt and infamy od the latter years of his reign. 

About the same time, however, James took occasion, by 
one outrageous act of tyranny, to show that the very worst 
qualities belonged to his natural disposition, and that they 
had been not so much brought to light by his new favourites 
as kept in check and stifled by his old minister. Arabella 
Stuart, as has been already mentioned, was his own near 
kinswoman, and she had become attached to William Sey- 
1612. mour, the son of lord Beauchamp, who was also a distant 
relation of the king, as being descended from Mary, duchess 
of Suffolk, and daughter of Henry VII. The lovers were 
brought before the council and forbidden to marry; and, 
for disregarding this illegal command, they were committed 
to close confinement in the Tower. Seymour escaped ; but 
his wife failed in a similar attempt, and was imprisoned and 
treated with great rigour for four years, till death put an 
end to her sufferings. 


JAMES I. 


351 


XXXVI.] 

James bad perhaps no subject equal to filling Salisbury’s a.d. 
place as minister; but the one whom he selected, Robert 1612 - 
Carr, was wholly destitute of ability and virtue, and had no 
recommendation whatever, but personal beauty and the fact 
of being the son of one who had been loyal to queen Mary. 

His rise was unparalleled in rapidity. In a few months he 
was made viscount Rochester, and a knight of the garter, 
was loaded with riches adequate to the support of his new 
dignities, and transacted all the chief business of the state. 

His deficiencies were for a wffiile concealed in some degree 
by the capacity of his friend and councillor, sir Thomas 
Overbury; but, on his conceiving a violent passion for lady 
Essex, and proposing to procure her divorce from lord 
Essex, that she might become his wife, Overbury remon¬ 
strated with so much freedom against his allying himself 
with so profligate a woman as she had shown herself to be, 
that he lost Rochester’s favour without being able to pre¬ 
vent the match, which James himself, out of affection for 
his favourite, promoted in the most shameless manner; 
creating him earl of Somerset, that the lady might not lose 
rank by exchanging an earl for a viscount, and committing 
Overbury to prison for the offence he had given by his re- 1614. 
monstrances: nor were the lovers satisfied with his dis¬ 
grace, but they procured a woman of notorious character, a 
Mrs. Turner, to .poison him. The circumstances of his 
death created suspicion from the first; and, alter a time, 
the reports of the guilt of the Somersets became so general 
that James was unable to refuse a judicial investigation into 
the case. The countess pleaded guilty; the earl and several 
of the inferior agents were convicted; but, to the lasting 
infamy of James, while he signed the warrant for the exe¬ 
cution of the lesser criminals, he pardoned the earl and 
countess, and granted them a pension, though he did not 
restore their property which had become forfeited by their 
conviction. 

James, in consequence of his quarrels with the commons, 
had sometimes been put to strange shifts to’raise money: 
he had even sold some peerages; and, in 1611, he had 
created a new honour, between the peerage and the order of 
knighthood, called baronetage, which was conferred on 
every one who was willing to pay the fixed price of 1095/. 

He also sold several of the offices about the court to the 
highest bidder; on which occasion the place of cup-bearer was 


352 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. bought by a young gentleman, named George Villiers, who, 
after Somerset’s disgrace, rose to even higher preferment 
than that minion had attained. In a very short time he 
became duke of Buckingham, was appointed to no less than 
seven lucrative offices, and received grants of crown lands 
to the value of more than a quarter of a million of money. 
He was not as utterly abandoned as Somerset, but he was 
even a more dangerous adviser for the king, and for the 
young prince of Wales, who speedily became greatly at¬ 
tached to him ; for he was naturally of a haughty and inso¬ 
lent disposition, and his head became so completely turned 
by his elevation, that he could endure no opposition; and 
his influence acting on the weak and arbitrary James, ren¬ 
dered him more violent and tyrannical than ever. A mem¬ 
ber of parliament was fined the enormous sum of 5000/. for 
writing a letter setting forth his objections to the exaction 
of benevolences, which had long since been forbidden by an 
express law of Bichard III. ; and a barrister was actually 
imprisoned for life for using some expressions which were 
deemed disrespectful to the authority of the Star Chamber, in 
the discharge of his duty to a client. 

Sir W. Raleigh had been twelve years a prisoner, when, 
by spreading the report of his having discovered gold mines 
in Guiana on his previous voyage, he prevailed on James to 
release him, and to authorize him to go thither to take 
possession of it for the nation. The Spanish ambassador, 
Gondemar, at once protested against such an expedition, on 
the ground that all that portion of America had been granted 
to his sovereign by the pope. But Raleigh’s assurances that 
he meditated no attempt against any part of the Spanish 
possessions prevailed with James, and he was permitted to 
^sail with a fleet of twelve ships; but his very first step on 

1618. reaching the American coast was to attack the Spanish town 
of St. Thomas, at the mouth of the Orinoco, in which assault 
he lost several men and his own son; and his comrades, find¬ 
ing that he had no ground whatever for his assertion of the 
existence of gold mines of any great value in that district, 
and that his real object was to plunder the Spanish settle¬ 
ments, insisted on returning to England; where he was at 
once arrested, and executed in pursuance of the sentence 
passed upon him fourteen years before. No events of the 
whole reign had caused more general indignation. His 
almost universal talents, his reputation for military skill, 


JAMES I. 


353 


XXXVI.] 

courage, and enterprise had won him general admiration; a.d. 
while his long imprisonment had procured him equally 1618 - 
general sympathy, and caused his failings and offences to be 
forgotten; it was fairly argued that, though he had never 
received a formal pardon, beyond all doubt the appointment 
to command the late expedition had been a virtual one; and 
it was the common feeling that he was sacrificed to the 
jealous enmity of Spain, which country became in conse¬ 
quence more disliked than,ever. 

It soon appeared that James had particular reason for 1619— 
desiring to gratify the Spanish court, as he wished to obtain 1623 * 
the hand of a princess of that nation for prince Charles. 

A long negotiation ensued; and Charles, who, though he 
had never seen the princess, was eager for the marriage, 
listened willingly to the suggestion of Buckingham, and in 
company with him proceeded incognito to Spain. On 
arriving at Madrid, they laid aside their disguise, and were 
received with the highest honours by the new king, Philip 
IV. But this measure, though apparently calculated to 
ensure the success of the treaty, proved the cause of its 
failure. Buckingham with deliberate insolence affronted 
Olivarez, Philip’s prime minister; while his inconsiderate 
levity, both of manners and principles, offended the whole 
nation, with whose solemn and decorous gravity it was 
strangely at variance. He took offence at their unconcealed 
disapprobation, and easily inspired the prince with similar 
feelings ; and at last on one pretence or another the marriage 
was entirely broken off; while, to show to the world that its 
failure was to be imputed to the Spanish cabinet, the earl of 
Bristol, the English ambassador, was recalled from Madrid, 
and war, to the great joy of the nation, was declared 
against Philip. 

It was not the only war for which the country was eager. 

Some years before, the princess Elizabeth had been married 
to Erederic, the elector palatine, who, when the states of 
Bohemia, in revolt against the emperor Eerdinand II., 
offered him the sovereignty of their country, was ill advised 
enough to accept that precarious honour, and so to involve 
himself in hostilities against a power infinitely superior to 
his own; the forces of which were under the command of 
one of the most illustrious generals of the age, Spinola, who 
speedily overran the palatinate, and deprived Erederic not 
only of his newly-acquired power, but also of his hereditary 

a a 


354 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.D. dominions. The whole English nation burned with zeal to 
16U)—espouse the cause of their princess; and both houses of 

>23 ‘ parliament declared their willingness to spend their lives and 
fortunes in her defence; though the subsidies which they 
voted hardly corresponded to the ardour of their promises. 
But James was far from sharing their feelings. His notion 
of the authority of sovereigns was so high that he could not 
conceive the possibility of the Bohemians being justified in 
their revolt. He blamed his son-in-law for espousing the 
cause of rebellion; and, though he nominally went to war 
with the emperor on his account, and allowed one small body 
of troops, under sir Horace Vere, to go to his aid, and a 
second force to embark at Hover, under count Mansfeldt, 
which, however, never even landed on the Continent at all, 
he could not be prevailed upon to exert himself with any 
adequate vigour in his cause, but confined any further efforts 
to embassies and remonstrances, w r hich were sure to be dis¬ 
regarded by the powers to whom they were addressed, who 
well knew that they would never be seconded by active 
operations. 

He was not more successful in saving his ministers at 
home from disgrace, one of whom at least brought it on him¬ 
self by his own*misconduct. Erancis, lord Yerulam, better 
known by his earlier title of lord Bacon, the lord chancellor, 
was a man of genius so splendid, and of learning so profound 
and various, that no philosopher or scholar that had preceded 
him, and scarcely one that has lived since his time, is worthy 
to be compared with him : but unhappily he was as mean in 
spirit as he was lofty in intellect. It has been already men¬ 
tioned how basely he deserted his original patron, Essex, in 
his hour of need. Since that time, though he had risen to 
the highest honours in the state, he had won every step by 
the most abject solicitations and servility; and it now 
appeared that he had made his authority as chancellor sub¬ 
servient to his darling object of amassing money. In the 
spring of 1621 he was impeached by the commons for a long 
series of corrupt practices, and the fact of his having habitu¬ 
ally exacted bribes from parties who had causes to be tried 
in his court, as the price of his judgment in their favour, 
was so fully proved that he made no defence, but pleaded 
guilty, was deprived of his office, pronounced incapable of 
public employment in future, or of sitting again in parlia¬ 
ment, and condemned to be imprisoned in the Tower, and to 


JAMES I. 


355 


XXXVI.] 

pay a fine of 40,000Z. The latter portions of his sentence a.i>. 
were remitted by the king; but no sovereign could relieve 1G24 * 
him of the infamy of his conviction, which adheres to his 
memory as imperishably as the renown of his genius, and 
which supplied the great moralist of the last century with a 
warning for the youth ambitious of literary distinction to 
reflect, taught by the example of Bacon, 

“ The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,” 

how little the most brilliant talents can reflect real glory on 
their possessor, if separated from honour, honesty, and 
virtue. 

The guilt of the lord treasurer, the earl of Middlesex, who 
was also impeached for corruption, is not quite so clear, 
though he also was convicted of most of the charges brought 
against him, and received a sentence somewhat similar to 
that of Bacon. The cause of his prosecution, however, and 
perhaps his chief offence, was that he had made Buckingham 
his enemy, to please whom the prince of Wales himself 
showed great zeal in promoting his downfal, in spite of the 
warning of the king that he would live to have his fill of 
parliamentary impeachments. 

The marriage of the prince continued to be an object of 
great interest to the king; and as, on his return from Spain, 
Charles, passing through Paris, had seen the princess Hen¬ 
rietta Maria, the youngest daughter of Henry IV., and 
sister of the present king, and had conceived a great admira¬ 
tion for her, in the summer of 1624 proposals for her hand 
were made to the Prench court, and willingly acceded to; 
nor did Charles’s eagerness for the match abate, though 
cardinal Kichelieu, the minister of Louis XIII., insisted, as 
an indispensable condition, on great indulgence being secured 
to the Roman Catholics for the future, in spite of some very 
stringent resolutions against them that had lately been passed 
by both houses of parliament. 

In the spring of the next year, 1625, preparations were 1025. 
making for the celebration of the marriage, when James was 
seized with an ague, which after a short illness terminated 
his life, on the 27th of March, in the fifty-ninth year of his 
age, and the twenty-third of his reign as king of England. 

In this and the preceding reign the literature of our lan¬ 
guage had been making great progress. The B-eformation 
had set the minds of men free, and they showed their freedom 

a a 2 


356 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. by expatiating in every direction, leaving no field unexplored 

1025. by genius which, though brought out in additionally strong 
relief by the dark background of previous ignorance, needs 
not that contrast to secure the admiration of subsequent 
ages. In poetry Spenser led the way, and, though the 
allegorical character of his poem is at variance with modern 
taste, he exhibits a fertility of fancy and a richness of diction 
wdiich entitle him to be ranked high among the masters of 
his art, and as the first wdio fully proved and displayed 
the copiousness and energy of his native tongue. As poet 
and dramatist it is sufficient merely to name Shakespeare, 
without attempting to describe the various beauties of that 
unequalled observer of nature and discerner of the human 
heart; and he w r as followed by Jonson, Massinger, and 
others,—men who would have been considered the glory of 
any other nation, but whose fame suffers among ourselves 
from the comparison inevitably instituted between them and 
their mighty master. To polemical divinity Hooker brought 
the light of vast learning, exquisite taste, a splendid though 
temperate eloquence, and a store of such ample wisdom as 
still makes his work a text-book for all whose studies lead 
them to the consideration of the subjects there discussed; 
while every branch of philosophy was handled by Bacon 
with a wit that renders the driest matters attractive; a 
learning that makes the most profound subjects seem easy; 
an eloquence which never wearies ; a judgment which is 
never at fault; and a universal and prophetic sagacity which 
at times seems almost to penetrate into, and to lift the veil 
from, the most wondrous discoveries of modern science. 

James was a prince of considerable learning, which he was 
very fond of displaying with ill-timed pedantry, and not 
destitute of abilities, though they were not of a statesmanlike 
or practical character. He was a fair orator, and the speech 
which he made to his parliament in recommendation of the 
union with Scotland was reputed not greatly inferior to that 
of Bacon himself; but even from that speech, the proposal 
for that union, the only sign of political sagacity that he 
ever gave, appears to have been dictated more by his partiality 
for Scotland, his native country, and by an idea of what 
would tend to his own personal dignity, than by any 
adequate foresight of the advantages which both kingdom’s 
would derive from such a measure. In every other part of 
his reign, though there was no quality on which he prided 


CHARLES 1. 


357 


XXXVII.] 

himself so much as on what he called his kingcraft, or know- a.d. 
ledge of the best means to preserve his own dignity and the 1625, 
obedience of his subjects, he showed himself in fact wholly 
deficient in such knowledge, being engaged in continued 
altercations with his parliament, being repeatedly forced to 
hear the pretensions which he advanced pronounced illegal 
by his judges, and to abandon them ; though the manifest 
reluctance and ill humour with which he yielded on such 
occasions showed that he would have resisted had he dared, 
and produced rather contempt for his weakness than grati¬ 
tude for his condescension. By such constant displays of 
his arbitrary and rash, yet cowardly disposition, and by his 
subservience to worthless favourites, he had completely 
alienated the affection and respect of his subjects, and had 
provoked a spirit of general discontent and resistance, the 
contest with which he bequeathed to his son, whom his 
lessons had unhappily furnished with the weapons most 
unfitted of all others to encounter the difficulties in store 
for him, namely, a disbelief in any other source of the rights 
and liberties of the people than the will of the sovereign, 
who was equally justified in granting or withholding them ; 
and, as a necessary consequence, an overweening opinion of 
the sanctity of his office, the boundless extent of his 
authority, and the indelible guilt of all who should presume 
to disparage the one, or to question the other. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


CHARLES I. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Ferdinand II. 
Ferdinand III. . 1G37 


France. a.d. 
Louis XIII. 

Louis XIV. . . 1G43 

Spain. 

Philip IV. 


Popes. A.D. 
Urban IV. 

Innocent X. . 1644 


We have now arrived at the most momentous epoch in 1G25. 
English history; and I am about to describe the steps by 
which a king well-meaning, virtuous, and able, in conse¬ 
quence of the exaggerated notions of his royal dignity and 
prerogative, which had been instilled into him by his father, 
fell into the most grievous errors, disregarding the ancient 





358 


HISTOllY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. laws and constitution of the kingdom, and trampling on the 

16'25. liberties of the people, till they, being gradually provoked 
from dissent to remonstrance, from remonstrance to open 
resistance, at last broke into actual rebellion and war, under 
the fiercer leading of men who at first indeed were sincere 
in their attachment to religion and to liberty, but who (as 
success stimulated their fanaticism and developed their 
ambition) lost all regard for the dictates of the one, and 
trampled down the other with far sterner foot than the 
monarch against whom they had fought, till at last, in spite 
of the people, they put him to death with the forms of law, 
and themselves erected in the place of the royal authority 
an absolute government, more rigorous and unyielding than 
any that had been wielded by the proudest monarch, relying 
for its sole support on violence and terror, and on a stand¬ 
ing army, a force previously unknown in the history of the 
nation. 

Charles was in the twenty-fifth year of his age when he 
ascended the throne; and he possessed qualities which, in a 
happier time, might have rendered him a great and a pros¬ 
perous sovereign. He was dignified in appearance and in 
manner, endowed with an acute intellect, humane, religious, 
and courageous. It was not strange that the nation hailed 
his accession with joy, or that, disgusted with the pedantry 
and buffoonery, and ashamed of the cowardice and vices of 
James, they contrasted them with undisguised satisfaction 
with the sobriety and fearlessness, and even with the some¬ 
what haughty gravity of their new sovereign. Unhappily to 
Charles’s virtues and talents three were wanting, all of great 
importance to a ruler and a statesman: sagacity to discern 
the character of the times, firmness to adhere to resolutions 
deliberately and wisely formed, and sincerity towards his 
councillors, and, what is still more necessary, towards his 
opponents. Education might in some degree have remedied 
the two first-mentioned deficiencies, but such education he 
had never had a chance of receiving from such an instructor 
as James; while the last, and gravest defect of all, insin¬ 
cerity, was mainly the result of his father’s lessons, enforced 
by his father's constant example; for not only did James’s 
cowardice render him incapable of truth and honesty, but 
his whole system of kingcraft, as he called it, was based on 
a misapprehension which mistook cunning for wisdom, while 
his absurd ideas of his royal prerogative led him to fancy that, 


CHARLES I. 


359 


XXXVII.] 

as all the rights of his people flowed from no other source 
than his own free gift, they had no claim to more frankness or 
fairness of dealing than he chose to show to them ; and none 
at all if they presumed to differ from his opinions, or to dis¬ 
pute his will. And Charles, being but too well inclined 
to agree with his doctrine of the inherent greatness and 
absolute authority of kings, was led, by that agreement with 
them, to the adoption of this other theory also, however in¬ 
consistent with his own naturally manly and bold character. 

Unfortunately for him he lived at a time when the qualities 
in which he was thus deficient w'ere more than usually in¬ 
dispensable. The constitution was indeed marked out with 
sufficient precision by charters and laws ; the prerogatives of 
the monarch and the rights of the people were, in theory, 
defined with sufficient clearness and accuracy ; but, in prac¬ 
tice, since the barons, the original assertors and guardians of 
those rights, had, through slaughter and confiscation, the 
sad result of the civil wars of the roses, gradually succumbed 
to the crown, the crown gaining power from their weakness, 
had continually encroached on those rights ; not always with¬ 
out remonstrance, not indeed always without defeat, but 
still with a degree of general success that had rendered 
the boundary between the prerogative of the sovereign and 
the rights of the subject somewhat indistinct, especially to 
the eyes of rulers, from their arbitrary disposition more 
anxious to discern the former than the latter, and not suf¬ 
ficiently enlightened, as indeed few were in that day, to per¬ 
ceive, not only that the two were perfectly compatible, but 
that the just establishment of the people’s rights is, in 
truth, the most solid and durable foundation of the monarch’s 
power. Indeed, so little was this last position understood 
at the time of which we are speaking, that it was even 
argued by ministers of no mean or servile character, that, 
as the power of the kings of Spain and France was com¬ 
pletely absolute, it concerned the dignity of the English 
nation that their sovereign should not be possessed of au¬ 
thority more limited than that which was enjoyed by the 
continental monarchs. 

The princess Henrietta, his destined queen, arrived in 
England in May, and the marriage took place immediately; 
but she was prevented from entering London by a destructive 
pestilence which was raging in the metropolis, and which 
increased in virulence till the deaths amounted to nearly 


A.D. 

1625. 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

1 <>25. 


360 



4000 in a single week, and which also caused the adjourn¬ 
ment of the parliament to Oxford. 

Charles’s object in summoning the parliament so speedily 
was to procure a supply of which he was in great need both 
for the discharge of very considerable debts which James 
had left, and also for the prosecution of the Avar in Germany 
with greater vigour. But the parliament itself, or, at least, 
the commons, had other views. They had witnessed the 
continued attempts of the crown to extend the royal prero¬ 
gative, but they were also aware of their own increased power 
to withstand those attempts, for the gentry had gradually 
risen in riches and importance till many of them were equal 
in influence to nearly any of the peers 3 , and the principal 
towns had grown in wealth and population, till they had be¬ 
come too independent and too strong to be browbeaten as 
before by the frowns of a favourite, or the reproofs of the 
sovereign. 

Their representatives now met, resolved, if possible, to 
terminate the struggle which had subsisted so long, by es¬ 
tablishing their rights, and consequently the rights of the 
whole people, on a footing so firm and so fully recognized, 
that it should be impossible at any subsequent time to bring 
them into question ; and the king’s want of money presented 
them, at the very outset of his reign, with a favourable op¬ 
portunity. They seized it with an eagerness Avhich was 
neither just nor wise, for they granted him a sum so small 
as to be manifestly inadequate to the requirements of the 
state, and thus afforded him grounds for complaining of their 
conduct, and for objecting to the lofty pretensions which 
they put forward, and to the bold language in which they 
advanced them. Elizabeth had plainly prohibited the com¬ 
mons in her time from meddling with state affairs; but 
now, no matter was so high or so important that they did 
not claim it to be within their province to examine and to 
regulate it. They discussed foreign as well as domestic, 
ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs ; indeed the concerns of 
the Church were, in their eyes, the most important of all; 
and with a great portion of the lower house their main 
reason for attacking the prerogatives of the crown was, that 


3 It was said that in Charles’s first parliament, the property possessed by the 
members of the house of commons trebled that possessed by the house of 
peers. It must he remembered that the commons were full* three times as 
numerous as the peers. 


CHARLES I. 


361 


XXXVII.] 

it was only by lowering them that they could hope to succeed 
in their meditated assaults upon the Church establishment. 

Charles behaved with temper and moderation; promis¬ 
ing the redress of all just grievances, if they would first grant 
him the sums, the necessity for which he fully explained to 
them ; but when he found that the opposition, now for the 
first time acting in concert as a regular party, were not in¬ 
fluenced by his condescension, and that dislike to his favourite 
Buckingham, who was more unpopular than ever, was a 
leading motive with many of them, he dissolved the parlia¬ 
ment, and tried to raise the money which he needed by the 
exaction of forced loans, and other resources of arbitrary 
authority. He hoped also to enrich the exchequer by an 
expedition sent under lord Wimbledon to attack Cadiz, and 
to intercept the Spanish galleons; but it completely failed; 
and, as the late parliament had limited their grant of the 
customs to one year, he was forced to summon a second, 
which met in February, 1626. He hoped to find it more 
complacent than the last, having made some of the most able 
and obnoxious leaders of the opposition sheriffs of their 
respective counties. He also tried to disarm the enemies of 
Buckingham in the upper house by forbidding a writ to be 
sent to the earl of Bristol, with whom Buckingham had 
quarrelled at the time of his visit to Spain; and to Williams, 
bishop of Lincoln, lately lord keeper, whom he had already 
deprived of the seals at the duke’s instigation. Williams 
submitted in silence, but Bristol insisted on his right, com¬ 
pelled the issuing of the writ to which he was entitled, and 
when Charles ordered the attorney-general to prosecute him 
for high treason for taking his seat in defiance of his com¬ 
mand, Bristol retaliated by impeaching Buckingham, and 
instigating the commons to join in the impeachment. 

Both parties were so inflamed with anger as to be led 
into almost equal errors. The commons, having no positive 
facts on which to justify their prosecution of the favourite, 
actually passed a resolution that common fame is a sufficient 
ground for such a proceeding; and then, without any evi¬ 
dence whatever having been brought forward against him, 
'they required that he should be committed to the Tower. 
Charles, on his part, first ordered them not to meddle with 
any of his servants, though the precedents of Bacon and 
Middlesex in the late reign had fully established their right 
to do so, and then imprisoned sir John Elliott and sir 


A.D. 

1625. 


1626. 


362 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. Dudley Digges, the chief conductors of the impeachment, 

1G26. f or words reported to have been uttered by them in dis¬ 
charge of that duty. Finally, he again dissolved them 
when they had sat only a very few months, and again en¬ 
deavoured to obtain, by means of his prerogative, what he 
could not procure from their obedience. He renewed his 
exaction of loans, even imprisoning some of those who 
refused to contribute; he openly sold to the Roman Ca¬ 
tholics dispensations from the penal laws, of w T hich, in com¬ 
pliance with the request of his first parliament, he had 
ordered the rigorous enforcement, and demanded of the 
maritime towns contributions of ships, a tax which, when 
subsequently commuted into ship-money, proved the spark 
which lighted up the flames of civil war throughout the 
kingdom. 

I 627 . As these expedients could not possibly be very produc¬ 
tive, if Charles had been gifted with ordinary prudence, he 
would rather have terminated the war in which he was 
engaged, than have embarked in a new one, which must 
inevitably necessitate a fresh appeal to his people; yet he 
now suffered Buckingham to involve him in a war with 
France, solely to gratify a personal grudge, which the duke 
had conceived against cardinal Richelieu, the minister of 
Louis XIII., for thwarting some of his ambitious designs. 
An army was raised and entrusted to the command of 
Buckingham himself, who proceeded towards Rochelle, the 
stronghold of the French Huguenots, to aid them against 
the preparations which the cardinal was making for their 
destruction. Buckingham displayed eminent personal cou¬ 
rage, but neither military skill, nor even common prudence. 
In an attack on the isle of Rhe, which was strongly for¬ 
tified, he lost the greater part of his men, and returned to 
England to encounter greater hatred than ever, for the 
future to be mingled with contempt. 

The expense of this expedition had rendered it absolutely 
necessary to summon another parliament; and, in order to 
conciliate the people, those who had been illegally im¬ 
prisoned on different pretexts were released; but even 
now, when the policy of a milder line of conduct was thus 
admitted, the king could not forbear showing that he clung 
as firmly as ever to his fancied prerogative, and admonished 
the commons, in a haughty speech, that, if they failed in 
their duty of granting him the supplies which he required, 


CHARLES I. 


363 


XXXVII.] 

God had put other means in his hands, which he should 
not scruple to use. The commons, on their part, under 
the guidance of men of great capacity, Pym, Denzil, Hollis, 
sir Thomas Wentworth, and sir Edward Coke, who, though 
now of great age, had lost none of his ability, and but 
little of his energy, began to act with more prudence than 
in the previous parliaments. Being determined to give the 
king no reasonable cause for complaining of them, and dis¬ 
solving them, immediately after presenting a petition, pray¬ 
ing him to enforce the laws against Eoman Catholics, they 
voted him a considerable supply, and then applied them¬ 
selves with diligence and firmness to the removal of abuses ; 
and, as they did not think it sufficient to trust to their 
own vote alone for the securing of this subject, they solicited 
a conference with the lords, and, having communicated 
their design to them, they drew up the famous petition of 
right, which was agreed to by the house of peers, and which 
was then presented to Charles to receive his assent. 

It was difficult for him to find any pretext on which to 
object to it; for it conferred no privileges on the people, 
and imposed no restrictions on the king which were not 
already contained in Magna Charta; but he tried every 
means in his power to evade giving it his sanction, and at 
last only consented to it in the hope of averting the general 
indignation from Buckingham, to whose advice his conduct 
was openly attributed. 

In this hope he was disappointed. One of the clauses 
of the bill of rights had pronounced the illegality of all 
forced loans, and of taxes exacted without the sanction of 
an act of parliament; but, as the tonnage and poundage 
was supposed to stand on a different footing from other 
taxes, and as the lords in the first year of Charles’s reign 
had refused to agree with the commons in granting it for 
one year only, the commons now presented a separate 
remonstrance against the levying of that impost any longer 
by the royal authority, and a second against the influence 
of the duke of Buckingham. The first Charles was ill 
advised enough to reject, and of the second he prevented 
the delivery by proroguing the parliament. 

Buckingham, however, had private enemies, from whom 
he could not escape. He was at Portsmouth, in his 
capacity of lord high admiral, preparing a fleet to go to 
the aid of the citizens of Eochelle, when he was assassinated 


A.D. 

1028 . 


364 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. by a man of the name of Felton, whom he had offended 

3628. ky ^he re f US al of promotion in the expedition which ter¬ 
minated so ingloriously in the isle of Khe. Charles was 
grieved at his death, and indignant at the general joy which 
it seemed to diffuse; but it was an event very favourable 
for his prospect of succeeding with the parliament in its 
second session, as removing one cause of contention, and 
likewise as enabling him completely to deprive the opposition 
of its most formidable leader. 

1029. Of all those who had led the commons in their late suc¬ 
cessful struggle, sir Thomas Wentworth (so universally 
known by the title of the earl of Strafford that I shall 
henceforward call him bv that title, though, in fact, it was 
not conferred on him till nearly twelve years later) was by 
far the most eminent for every kind of statesmanlike talent. 
He had also been, above all others, obnoxious to the crown, 
and a mark for its highest displeasure. He had been one 
of those appointed sheriffs, in order to prevent their elec¬ 
tion to Charles’s second parliament, and he had been im¬ 
prisoned for his refusal to contribute to the loans which 
Charles endeavoured to force on his people by his own 
authority; but his real disposition inclined him to favour 
arbitrary power, and his opposition had mainly proceeded 
from personal feelings of dislike to Buckingham. However, 
just before the duke’s murder, the king had succeeded in 
reconciling them, and had raised him to the peerage, by 
the title of lord Wentworth. He was henceforward, as 
president of the council of the north, to be one of Charles’s 
chief advisers, and the most formidable opponent of his 
previous friends. Their rage at what they considered his 
apostasy knew no bounds. Pym threatened him with a 
future day of retribution in Westminster Hall, scarcely, 
perhaps, deeming how true a prophet his own rage and 
Strafford’s pride would contribute to make him. Strafford’s 
change of politics was unfortunate for nearly every one 
affected by it; for himself, for it led him to his death; 
for the Presbyterians, whom he quitted, since the revenge 
which they took was the first great violation of all justice 
with which they sullied a cause which they had previously 
maintained with rare judgment, firmness, and moderation; 
above all, to the master, whose objects he from that time 
forth so unflinchingly upheld, since Charles’s consent to 
his death was, (with the exception of the infatuated folly of 


CHARLES T. 


365 


XXXVII.] 

liis behaviour towards the rest of his people,) his one great 
crime, that crime which embittered his latter years with 
remorse; and since the too energetic and able support which 
his counsels and his conduct afforded to the king greatly 
contributed to keep Charles so long in that course which at 
last led to his ruin. 

The session was a very brief one: the commons renewed 
their demand for the rigid enforcement of the laws against 
Roman Catholics, in the discussions on which subject Oliver 
Cromwell, for the first time, took a part in the debates as 
member for Cambridge, and were proceeding to pass a law 
making the levying of tonnage and poundage without their 
consent illegal for the future, when the speaker, alleging an 
express order from the king, refused to put such a motion 
from the chair. Charles had expressed his willingness to 
receive this tax as a grant from the parliament, provided 
they would grant it to him for life, as had always been done 
in previous reigns; but they were determined only to 
confer it upon him for a year. The conduct of the speaker 
raised an uproar in the house: he left the chair; Hollis and 
others dragged him back, and held him in his place. The 
king, hearing of the tumult, sent a message to announce that 
he had dissolved the parliament; his messenger was refused 
admittance. At last the vote in question was put from the 
chair, was carried unanimously, and then the house ad¬ 
journed. Several of the members were at once arrested and 
committed to prison, and, a few days afterwards, Charles 
went down to the house of lords, and, with a speech of 
undignified anger, calling the opponents of his will “ sedi¬ 
tious vipers,” he dissolved the parliament. 

He had thus terminated three parliaments in displeasure 
in less than four years; and he now determined to govern 
without them for a time, till the people should become sensible 
that he was able to dispense with them altogether, and should 
so be rendered more submissive, and willing to elect repre¬ 
sentatives inclined to more moderate counsels. His first 
steps after the dissolution were designed to inculcate the ad¬ 
vantages of such moderation by taking severe vengeance on 
those who had been the leaders of the late opposition, and 
at the same time to replenish, in a slight degree, the royal 
exchequer. Several members of the house of commons 
were arrested, sir John Elliott, Hollis, and Valentine were 
prosecuted in the Court of King’s Bench for their conduct 


366 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. on the last day of the session, and the base and servile 

1G29. judges sentenced them to be imprisoned during the king’s 
pleasure, and to pay heavy fines ; iudeed, enormous pecu¬ 
niary penalties formed no inconsiderable portion of the 
revenue during the following years ; being continually in¬ 
flicted for acts which no law had ever declared to be offences, 
and being of such an amount as often utterly to impoverish 
and ruin the victims. 

With better judgment the king made peace with Trance 
and Spain, in order to diminish his annual expenses; but, 
though this piece of economy lessened the amount of his 
exactions, it did not change their character: it was not the 
amount of the taxes of which the commons had complained, 
but of their being demanded without the consent of the 
nation ; and, now that there was no parliament, there was 
no other means by which that consent could be asked or 
signified. Yet, wholly arbitrary as Charles’s government now 
was, there was no settled system, and no unanimity in his 

1830 — counsels. His ostensible ministers were Strafford, whose 

1640. vas t capacity has been already mentioned, and Laud, arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, who resembled Strafford in nothing 
but his inclination for despotic measures. He was a man 
of considerable theological learning, and his preference of 
the Arminian to the Calvinistic doctrines gave the Church 
of England the bias which it has ever since retained; of 
sincere piety, though it did not preserve him from many 
actions of a revengeful and even of an inhuman character; 
but he had no enlargement of mind, no genius for govern¬ 
ment, no judgment in the characters of men, no talent for 
conciliating them. He had been originally recommended 
to Charles by his zeal for the Church, and he increased in 
favour when he was found to be equally imbued with a 
belief in the Divine origin of kingly power, and, conse¬ 
quently, of the wickedness of those who would presume to 
set bounds to its exercise. But there was an influence at 
court superior even to theirs. Charles was a fond, an 
uxorious husband, and the queen Henrietta deserved his 
affection by her beauty, her ability, and her attachment to 
him, which in the first portion of her married life was, at 
all events, faithful and sincere; but, unhappily, she was 
possessed by a restless fondness for political intrigue, and a 
resolute desire, not only to rule her husband, but to show 
to all the world that she did so. In consequence, she con- 


CHARLES I. 


367 


XXXVII.] 

stantlv led him into acts still more hasty and ill judged than 
even his own temper would have prompted; and the discon¬ 
tent that the knowledge of her influence caused was aug¬ 
mented by the fact of her being a Roman Catholic, and of 
those courtiers who enjoyed the greatest share of her favour 
being of the same persuasion. Strafford, whose manners 
were plain and blunt, and whose disposition was always 
unyielding, disdained to court her good will, and was, in 
consequence, the object of her jealousy, and of continued 
disparagement by herself and her favourites ; till the govern¬ 
ment became so weak and inefficient that the navy was 
reduced so low as to be unable even to protect our own 
shores. Barbary pirates landed on the Kentish coast and 
carried off the inhabitants as slaves, though they failed in 
their attempt to commit similar atrocities in Ireland, where 
Strafford, who was governing that island as lord-lieutenant, 
repelled them with ships which he fitted out at his own 
expense. 

Meantime every conceivable method of exacting money 
was practised; monopolies were regranted, dispensations 
were sold, even the rights of admitted owners to manage 
their own property as they pleased was disputed, in order 
to extort money for the permission so to manage it: while, 
to gratify the clergy, and to encourage them to support 
the authority of the crown by their teaching, fresh measures 
of increased severity were adopted against the Noncon¬ 
formists. The Court of High Commission, a cruel engine of 
tyranny, first invented in the reign of Elizabeth, now re¬ 
ceived additional powers, and by the bigotry of Laud was 
set in more active motion than ever, and uniformity was so 
rigorously enforced, that numbers of the ingenious mechanics 
whom, during and since the reign of Elizabeth, foreign per¬ 
secution had driven from France, Holland, and Germany, 
and who had found an asylum on the British shores, were 
now driven back again to their own land to the great injury 
of England, which they had enriched by their industry and 
benefited still more by their example. Many also of the 
English themselves emigrated to countries where they might 
enjoy that religious liberty which was denied to them in 
their native land, betaking themselves, for the most part, to 
Massachusetts, in North America, where a British colony 
had been founded a few years before. 


AD. 

1630— 

1640. 


368 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

CHARLES I. (CONTINUED). 

A * D * Yet while thus losing some of his own subjects, and dis- 
1640 g us ti u g others, Charles was inconsiderate enough to aim 
at extending his dominion on the Continent, and began to 
negotiate with the disaffected party in Holland, in expec¬ 
tation of obtaining the sovereignty of that country, which 
Elizabeth had, more wisely, refused; but this project was 
betrayed to the court of Spain by one of his own ministers, 
lord Cottiugton, and only alienated the Spaniards, without 
producing him any corresponding advantage. 

The Star Chamber, as having a more extended jurisdiction, 
was even more formidable and more detested than the 
Court of High Commission; and Laud, as the supreme 
director of both, put forth their powers in a way which 
did as little credit to his humanity as to his wisdom. One 
poor clergyman, named Workman, with an over great dread 
of popish usages, had said that pictures in churches were 
idolatrous. Not only was he thrown into prison by the 
Court of High Commission, and, when released, forbidden by 
Laud either to keep a school, or to practise as a physician, 
so that he was actually driven to insanity by the destitution 
which he saw before him, and died a maniac; but the 
mayor and municipal officers of the city of Gloucester were 
heavily fined by the Star Chamber for having granted him 
a small annuity for his services, though the grant was made 
long before the offence in question was committed. Eor 
writing a book against plays and play actors Prynne was 
condemned to pay a fine of 5000/., to stand in the pillory, 
to have both his ears cut off, and to be imprisoned for life ; 
while even the fact of the archbishop owing his promotion 
to the episcopal bench to the influence of bishop AVilliams, 
could not protect that prelate from still heavier penalties, and 
from an imprisonment, which would probably have outlasted 
liis life, had it not been for the interposition of the peers 
on the meeting of the long parliament; because he had not 
betrayed the important fact that one of his correspondents 
had in one letter called the archbishop “ a great little man,” 
and “ a little urchin ” in another. 

Still these atrocities, though causing great dissatisfaction, 


CHARLES I. 


369 


XXXVIII.] 

had produced no actual resistance. That was first provoked a.d. 
by the continued violation of the great constitutional prin- 163 7- 
ciple, that no money could be exacted from the people which 
had not been granted by their representatives in parliament. 

In the first years of Charles’s reign, as has been already 
mentioned, the maritime towns were required to furnish 
ships fully equipped for the defence of the kingdom. After 
a time Noy, the attorney-general, suggested the commuta¬ 
tion of this demand into a money-payment, to be assessed 
on the whole kingdom ; and his idea was eagerly adopted 
as a plausible ground for extending the royal prerogative; 
since, if considered apart from the illegality of the exaction 
as unauthorized by parliament, it seemed reasonable that 
the whole people should equally contribute to the common 
defence. Before proceeding to put it in execution, the 
judges were entrapped into giving an opinion that under 
the circumstances, there being “ danger to the safety of 
the kingdom,” the king had the power to enforce the pay¬ 
ment of this tax or ship-money. Their opinion was pub¬ 
lished throughout the kingdom, and then the tax was levied 
with great rigour. Three men, Richard Chambers, and 
after him lord Say, and John Hampden, refused to pay it, 
and appealed to the law ; but as the case of Hampden was 
that formally argued before the entire bench of judges, 
the subject has become as completely identified with his 
name, as if he had stood alone in his glorious resistance. 

The sum demanded of him was only twenty shillings; and, 
after a full discussion, five only of the judges decided in 1637— 
his favour, whilst seven pronounced that the tax was law- 1 fit¬ 
fully imposed. The king exulted in his victory ; and Strafford 
declared that the real effect of the decision was to make 
him an absolute monarch. He deceived himself and his 
master. Before the exaction was thus ratified by the 
judges, men in general had submitted to it with cheerful¬ 
ness, thinking it trivial in amount, usefully employed, and 
also what they could at any time terminate by objecting to 
it; but now they saw not only that that burden was riveted 
on their necks for ever, but that the principle thus esta¬ 
blished placed their whole estates at the mercy of the king, 
and of his ministers. 

To the discontent caused by these events was added a 
great jealousy of the innovations which the archbishop had 
of late years introduced into the forms of the worship of 

b b 






A.D. 

1637- 

1638. 


370 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

the Church, reviving many of the ancient ceremonies, in a 
manner which to minds inflamed as those of the Puritans 
were with a blind horror of the superstitions of Pome, 
seemed to indicate an intention of again bringing the 
nation under the papal yoke. Indeed, this belief extended 
to Kome itself, so much that Urban privately offered Laud 
a cardinal’s hat; and, though it was at once rejected, and 
the attachment of the king and archbishop to the Church 
of England was perfectly sincere, the idea that they were 
thus favourable to a form of religion so generally and so 
deeply detested, was more prejudicial to the king’s in¬ 
terests than the most illegal and arbitrary of his political 
measures. 

These feelings spread widely and rapidly; yet, though 
the discontent was so universal in England that it could 
have been unknown to nothing but wilful blindness, Charles 
proceeded to alienate Scotland also, by an attempt to force 
the doctrines and liturgy of the Church of England upon 
the people of that kingdom. 

Of late years the presbytery, as established by Knox, 
had lost much of its power, and the bishops had recovered 
a great portion of their authority; but the people, though 
hitherto silent under the change, were not pleased with it; 
and the reading of the new liturgy, very slightly altered 
from the English form, in the cathedral at Edinburgh, stirred 
them up to a fearful riot. It was to no purpose that the 
marquis of Hamilton, who had lately returned from Ger- 
many, where he had commanded the force which Charles 
had sent to the aid of Gustavus Adolphus, and who was 
highly esteemed by his countrymen, was sent to pacify 
them. Many of the nobles made common cause with the 
recusants, and together they drew up the solemn league 
and covenant, which was speedily signed by almost the 
whole kingdom, and which bound the subscribers to defend 
the presbyterian forms against all enemies. 

If it had been folly to provoke such a general insurrection, 
it was nothing short of madness to try to put it down bv 
force of arms; yet that was the plan resolved on in the 
councils of Charles. He wrote to Strafford to send him 
over troops from Ireland. He ordered a large army to be 
collected at York, and repaired thither himself with his 
court, having appointed the earls of Essex and Arundel 
generals of his forces. The Scots, on their side, were equally 


CHARLES I. 


371 


XXXVIII.] 

decided in their measures ; they too raised an army and placed 
it under the command of general Lesley, and the preachers 
throughout the kingdom did their utmost to swell its ranks 
by making their pulpits resound with the curses, which, in 
their profane application of the Scriptures to the aims of 
their own party, they clamoured against those who, like the 
inhabitants of Meroz, “came not to the help of the Lord 
against the mighty.” 

Charles and his army advanced to Berwick, when, as if on 
purpose to show that there was a lower depth of folly than 
commencing such an expedition, he abandoned it without 
striking a single blow, and concluded a pacification with the 
Scots, in which every question in dispute was left open for 
subsequent negotiation, except that of the continuance of 
the Scottish episcopacy, which he agreed to abolish. The 
reason for this weak conduct was, that his exchequer was so 
unprovided that he was unable to pay the army which he 
had collected; and this consideration ought, in all prudence, 
to have led him to maintain the peace to which he had 
agreed. But he was incapable of that steadiness of resolu¬ 
tion which is so necessary to a ruler; and, as the Scottish 
assembly of divines, and the Scottish parliament, both showed 
an inclination rather to advance their pretensions than to 
recede from them, Charles, having collected a little money, 
again, by the advice of Straftord, who had come over from 
Ireland to assist in his councils, determined to renew the 
war. 

As, however, it was evident that the sums which he could 
raise by his own authority would be wholly insufficient to 
maintain w r ar, he resolved once more to summon a parlia¬ 
ment ; a step which he was the more willing to take, because, 
as he had evidence of the Scots having applied to the French 
king for assistance, he thought that this manifest treason of 
theirs w r ould unite the English in his cause. In April, 1640, 
the parliament met, and it soon appeared that he had greatly 
miscalculated the sentiments which it w r as likely to enter¬ 
tain. The ancient jealousy between the two nations was 
not indeed dead; but for the time it had given w r ay to a 
sympathy engendered by a community of religious prejudices. 
The same differences between the. commons and the king 
arose that had caused the dissolution of previous parliaments. 
Charles demanded that they should first grant him the sup¬ 
ply of which he had need, and then consider the grievances 
. b b 2 


A.D. 

1639. 


1640. 



372 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. of which they desired the removal. They wished to make 

H* 4 0. ^he g ran t of supply the reward for the previous redress of 
their complaints. Still they urged this claim with so much 
more moderation than before, being delighted at being thus 
reassembled, and looking on that as in fact a sufficient vic¬ 
tory ; and his voluntary promise to abolish ship-money, if 
they would grant him twelve subsidies in three years, being 
also a removal of the principal subject of contention, that 
probably this difference would have been adjusted, had not 
sir Harry Vane, the secretary of state, declared, without 
any authority, that Charles would listen to no modification 
of his proposals, and had not Charles himself instigated the 
house of peers to use their good offices with the commons 
to obtain him the supply which he requested. At this 
violation of their privileges the commons took fire ; and, 
having voted that the lords had no right to interfere in a 
question of supply, now insisted on postponing the con¬ 
sideration of that subject till they had secured the reforms 
which they required. Had Charles known his real interests 
he would, as he easily might have done, have secured the 
good will, and continued the existence of that parliament, 
which, in the deliberate opinion of lord Clarendon, contained 
an unusual number of persons kindly and loyally disposed 
towards him ; but he instantly dissolved them, though even 
in respect of this act he was so little firm in his purposes 
that he had scarcely done it before he repented of it, and 
consulted his councillors whether he could not annul the 
dissolution. 

Yet in a few weeks he returned to his former expedients. 
Strafford, though he was greatly broken in health, had re¬ 
turned to Ireland, and had procured large sums from the 
parliament of that country, some members of which were 
intimidated by bis earnest vigour, some yielded to the legiti¬ 
mate influence of his mighty mind, some were persuaded by 
well-deserved gratitude for the benefits which his judicious, 
though despotic government had conferred upon their coun¬ 
try. He was thus enabled to transmit 300,0007 to the 
English exchequer; and Charles, encouraged by his success, 
returned to all his old exactions, though of some, such as 
ship-money, he had already, by implication, acknowledged the 
illegality. What was worse, he repeated his acts of oppres¬ 
sion towards those members of the late parliament who had 
displeased him by their votes, imprisoning some, and causing 


I 


373 


XXXVIII.] 


CHARLES I. 


fines to be inflicted on others; and then he again marched a.d. 
towards Scotland, resolved to subdue one disaffected king- 164 ^- 
dom with the troops of another which was more and more 
justly disaffected still. 

Strafford was in very bad health ; but, never backward 
to support the measures which he advised, he had returned 
from Ireland, and accompanied the king to the north to take 
the command of the army. When they arrived at Y”ork they 
found that the Scots had anticipated them in offensive mea¬ 
sures, having invaded England, beaten a detachment under 
lord Conway, at Newburn, and overrun all the northern dis- 

I trict. The English troops were reluctant to fight against 
them ; but no one could resist the iron will of Strafford. He 
led on his troops, and obtained some unimportant advan¬ 
tages. But again money began to be wanting. Bather 
than again have recourse to parliament, Charles endeavoured 
to procure a loan from the city. The citizens implored him 
to call a parliament. He resolved instead to summon the 
great council of the peers, a feudal assembly which had not 
been convened since the time of the Plantagenets, and 
which, when it met, proved to be as desirous as the rest of 
his subjects of the meeting of a regular parliament. Charles 
yielded, having first commenced negotiations with the Scots, 

( and signed the preliminaries for a complete pacification, and, 
in November, 1640, his last parliament, known in subsequent 
times as the long parliament, from its unprecedented dura¬ 
tion, assembled at Westminster. 

It was not yet too late for Charles to conciliate his people. 

Had he been , endowed with statesmanlike prudence, had 
he been possessed of real magnanimity, he would have 
seen that in fact the contest between himself and his people 
was terminated by their victory, and would have been above 
continuing a struggle, every day of which must inevitably be 
detrimental to his power, and derogatory to his dignity. 

Had he properly understood the question at issue, it was no 
shame, even for a king, gracefully to acknowledge the rights 
of his subjects, while such an acknowledgment would have 
done for him what no exactions and no arms ever could do, 

—it would have opened to him the purses, and gained for 
him the hearts of the whole nation. Unhappily he had none 
of the wisdom which had so eminently distinguished Eliza¬ 
beth He made far more numerous and far greater conces- 

' 









HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


374 



a.d. sions to his people than she had ever made; but he showed 
1640. that they were wrung from him by necessity. 

The long parliament met on the 3rd of November. It 
had been suggested to Laud, by superstitious people, that it 
was a day of ill omen, as the anniversary of that on which, 
in the reign of Henry VIII., that parliament had assembled 
which had seen the ruin of Wolsey, and the destruction of 
the monasteries. Charles opened it with a speech, in which 
he required its earliest attention to the object of granting 
him a supply to subdue the rebellious Scots, who were still 
within the English border; but the commons were less 
inclined than ever to be guided by his wishes. The dissolu¬ 
tion of the last parliament had inspired them with a deep 
distrust of him; and they determined, before such a step 
could possibly be repeated, to place a brand on all the 
grievances of which they had reason to complain in a manner 
which must ensure their redress. Numerous committees 
were appointed to examine into the different abuses, and 
within a few days unanimous resolutions were passed, con¬ 
demning monopolies, ship-money, arbitrary imprisonment; 
abolishing the Courts of the Star Chamber and of the High 
Commission; and reversing the judgments pronounced 
against Prynne, Hampden, and others, who were not unrea¬ 
sonably looked on as martyrs for the rights of the people ; 
while instead of granting the king a supply to subdue the 
Scots, they voted a sum to pay that army, in order to retain 
it in England, declaring that they could not spare them, as 
the sons of Zeruiah were still too strong. To the greater 
part of these votes Charles gave his royal assent, and, 
though unwillingly, did not withhold it from a bill compelling 
him to assemble a parliament at least once in three years, 
and preventing him from dissolving it till it had sat fifty 
days. He was saved from the necessity of rejecting another 
bill, excluding the bishops from parliament, by the house of 
lords, who themselves threw it out, though originally the idea 
had proceeded from one of their own body, the earl of Essex, 
who had made a similar motion in the reign of king James. 

But before the carrying of these votes the presbyterian 
party in the commons had struck a blow more subversive 
of Charles’s real power than any of them ; they had im¬ 
peached Strafford and Laud of high treason. Strafford had 
governed Ireland for eight years, certainly on arbitrary prin- 


CHAltLES I. 


XXXVIII.] 



ciples, and with occasional acts of tyranny and oppression, a.d. 
but with consummate skill and vigour, and with eminent 
success. To this day that country feels the benefit of his 
far-sighted sway in the prosperity of the linen trade, w T hich 
he originally established. But he had also been the chief 
adviser of some of the most illegal actions of the king ; and, 
knowing that his enemies w r ere eager for his ruin, he was 
unwilling to leave Ireland at this juncture, but yielded to 
the earnest entreaties and promises of Charles, who was in 
need of his advice to steer through, and of his firmness to 
assist him to encounter, the difficulties which both foresaw. 

Six days after the meeting of parliament he arrived in Lon¬ 
don, resolved to impeach the presbyterian leaders of having 
encouraged the Scottish insurrection, a fact of which he had 
ample proof; but the next day he was seized with a brief 
illness, and, on the day after, Pym impeached him of high 
treason, and the peers committed him to the Tower to await 
his trial. It took place in the spring of the ensuing year. 

In all that regards the pomp and circumstance of judicial 
solemnity, England had, at that time, never seen a more im¬ 
posing spectacle ; eighty peers sat as the judges of the 
prisoner; the whole body of the commons pressed forward 
as his accusers; in a closed gallery sat the king and queen, 
anxious spectators of the scene ; while Strafford himself, 
lofty spirit and conscious genius triumphing for a time over his 
shattered health, and reinvigorating his enfeebled frame, 
bowed gracefully to the lords, formerly his brethren in council, 
now r the arbiters of his fate, and then stood erect to con¬ 
front the utmost malice of his enemies. The charges against 
him were many in number, and extended over the w T hole 
period of his Irish government, to which they chiefly referred. 

They w r ere advanced and supported by all the ability, and 
vigour, and learning of the whole house of commons, while 
Strafford had no advocate but himself; nevertheless, for 
nearly three weeks did he conduct the contest with such 
admirable skill and temper that at last Pym and his friends 
were compelled tacitly to admit that the charge of treason had 
utterly broken down ; and as it was plain that law and justice 
must secure his acquittal, they brought in a bill of at¬ 
tainder to put to death a man whom even the most virulent 
despaired of being able to prove guilty of any crime deserving 
it. The bill passed the commons, though even in that house 
fifty-nine members voted against it, who were insulted by 




A.D. 

1G41. 


376 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

the mob, cunningly inflamed by the chief men among the 
prosecutors. In the house of lords the struggle was fiercer; 
at last nearly half the members of that house were intimi¬ 
dated into absenting themselves from the decision, and a 
majority of seven passed the bill as they received it from 
the commons. It still required the assent of Charles, who 
had assured the prisoner that his enemies should never 
touch a hair of his head. Charles, in truth, was anxious to 
save him ; he besought the commons to be satisfied with his 
promise never again to employ him ; but they thirsted for 
his blood, and were inexorable. He had a still more for¬ 
midable enemy. The queen had never liked him ; and was 
now thoroughly alarmed at the popular fury which raged 
against him. She urged her husband to ensure his own 
safety by the abandonment of his too faithful servant. With 
rare magnanimity, Strafford himself wrote to the king, cheer¬ 
fully placing his own life at his disposal, if the sacrifice could 
tend to the safety of the king and kingdom; and at last 
Charles signed the fatal warrant, which consigned to the 
scaffold his minister and friend, who met his doom with a 
proud meekness and a patient courage, which has scarcely 
ever been equalled save in that day when the sovereign him¬ 
self trod the same fatal path. 

The crime of Strafford’s death was great on the part of 
the commons, who, disregarding the king’s promise to dis¬ 
card him as a minister, thirsted for his blood with a virulence 
not in the least abated by the complete failure of their at¬ 
tempts to bring home to him any offence that could possibly 
be called treason. Not that Strafford had been always a 
constitutional ora righteous governor. Beyond all question 
he had endeavoured to render the royal power absolute in 
Ireland, though it may fairly be urged in defence of that 
part of his conduct, that in that country the liberties of 
the people had never been secured by such enactments as 
Magna Charta and the Petition of Right. He had been 
betrayed into one or two acts of gross tyranny towards in¬ 
dividuals, he had also counselled some of the most illegal 
and violent measures of the king, and had certainly desired 
to see him absolute in England also. But not only do none 
of these acts amount to high treason, but the very fact of a 
bill of attainder to put him to death being thought necessary, 
proves that they were known not to amount to it. Doubt¬ 
less the real cause of his death was as much fear for the 


CHARLES I. 


377 


XXXVIII.] 

future as anger for the past. Many of the leaders of 
the commons were already planning such reductions of the 
royal power as they knew that Charles would resist, and as 
perhaps might, in his eyes, absolve him from his promise to 
avail himself no more of Strafford’s counsels ; and they re¬ 
solved to deprive him for ever of so formidable an adviser. 

But for Charles there is no excuse. He declared himself, 
when entreating the parliament to show mercy to their 
destined victim, that he knew him to be innocent, and that 
his conscience would not permit him to consent to his death. 
Strafford’s own magnanimous self-sacrifice only made his 
duty clearer, and his violation of that duty was not only the 
one act of his life which embittered his last hours with re¬ 
morse, but was also very probably the cause of those last hours 
ending as they did end ; since though Lucas and Hopton’s 
loyalty and Rupert’s chivalry were unequal to the contest, it 
may well be questioned whether even the skill of Fairfax, 
and the persevering cunning of Cromwell, must not have 
yielded to the combination of political and military genius, 
the fertility of resource, and relentless firmness of Strafford. 

Encouraged by this great victory, the leaders of the com¬ 
mons proceeded vigorously in the path which they had 
marked out for themselves ; and already a division began to 
exist in their councils. Some of the wisest of them, such 
as Pym, Hollis, and Hampden, had formed in their own 
minds a plan of government something similar to that which 
exists among us at present, in which the sovereign has the 
rank and nominal authority, while the real pow r er is lodged 
in the parliament. But more violent members, such as 
Cromwell and Henry Martin, who, though a notorious 
coward, surpassed all men in the audacity of his tongue, 
already began to hold threatening language concerning the 
form of government, and even concerning the life of the 
king. For the opposition, if we may so call it, was, almost 
from the first, divided by diversity of religious opinions, 
which was the parent of political differences also, that never 
ceased till the presbyterian or moderate party w r as extin¬ 
guished by the superior energy of the Independents. 

The notoriety of these differences seems to have suggested 
to Charles the idea of trying to gain over some of the most 
respectable of the presbyterian party, and, a little before the 
death of Strafford, and partly perhaps in the hope of saving 
him, he admitted to the privy council the earl of Bedford, 


A.D. 

1641. 




378 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. lord Essex, lord Kimbolton, and lord Say; and even pro- 

IG41. p 0S ed to give Pym, Hampden, Hollis, and others official 
situations as ministers of state; but, except that Oliver St. 
John became solicitor-general, none of these appointments 
took place, and the reason why they did not shows in a 
striking manner the irresolution of the king; his facility in 
submitting to the dictation of others of abilities and virtues 
far inferior to his own; and the constant treachery of the 
inferior agents in his plans. The army was known to be 
discontented with the parliament, and envious of the large 
grant which had been made to the Scotch regiments. The 
queen’s pride and bigoted attachment to the Homan Catholic 
religion made her view with abhorrence any accommodation 
with Presbyterians and commoners (for sbe had not learnt 
to understand that many of the English untitled gentry 
were in family and property equal to the greatest nobles of 
other countries) ; and through her favourite, Henry Jermyn, 
who already began to exercise an injurious influence 
over her, she opened a negotiation with the chiefs of the 
discontented soldiery, hoping that either by open violence, 
or by remonstrance, irresistible when coming from the only 
armed force in the country, they would place the king in a 
more independent position. It was decided at last that the 
whole army should present a menacing petition to the parlia¬ 
ment, and Charles was weak enough to prefer this project to the 
more prudent plan of conciliating the parliamentary leaders, 
and in some degree disarming them, by employing them in his 
own service. But Goring, one of the chief officers, betrayed 
the whole affair to the earl of Bedford; and Pym and his 
friends, believing that the offer of ministerial appointments 
had been only meant to amuse them while the other plan 
was ripening, in natural indignation joined the more violent 
party, and prepared to carry on the contest with increased 
animosity and energy; though some of the more prudent 
and virtuous members of the opposition, such as lord 
Falkland, Hyde (known in later times as the earl of Cla¬ 
rendon), and sir John Colepepper, thinking that conces¬ 
sion sufficient to secure the liberty of the people had now 
been granted by the king, began to espouse his cause, and, 
being admitted into the number of his councillors, were of 
material service to him. 

In the autumn of 1611 Charles determined to go to 
Scotland, ostensibly with the design of completing the paci- 


CHARLES I. 


379 


XXXV11I.] 

fication of that portion of his dominions. The parliament 
were very unwilling to see him leave London, but, finding 
that they could not prevent his journey, they appointed a 
committee of both houses, with Hampden at its head, to 
attend him during his sojourn in the north. His road lay 
through both the English and the Scotch camp, and he was 
so courteous to the officers as to excite the jealousy of the 
parliamentary party, though they were uuable to find any 
plea to allege for their suspicions. On his arrival in Scotland, 
he granted everything asked of him by either the parliament 
or the assembly, even attending the worship of the Presby¬ 
terians, making large promises to the chiefs of the covenant, 
and authorizing prosecutions against its principal opponents ; 
when, suddenly, Hamilton and Argyle, two of the most 
powerful of the nobles, fled from Edinburgh, and though 
great endeavours were made to keep the cause of their flight 
secret, Hampden discovered it, and reported it to the 
English parliament. The real object of the king’s journey 
to Scotland had been to discover proofs of the correspond¬ 
ence of the chiefs of the English Presbyterians with the 
Scottish Covenanters, which had led to their late invasion of 
England. They were furnished him by the earl of Montrose, 
who at first had himself been one of the subscribers to the 
covenant, but who, through the influence of his rival Argyle, 
had been thrown into prison by them ; and who, in conse¬ 
quence, joined the king’s party, and was, for the rest of his 
life, his most powerful and able partisan in that kingdom. 
It was only the flight of Hamilton and Argyle that saved 
them from arrest; but the English parliament, on hearing 
of their danger, became alarmed for themselves, and applied 
to lord Essex, whom the king had left guardian of the 
southern counties, for a guard, which he at once granted 
them; while Hamilton and Argyle succeeded not only in 
making their peace with Charles, but in procuring additional 
honours from him, Argyle being made a marquis, and 
Hamilton a duke: and the latter became so firmly attached 
to the king’s interests, that he ultimately perished on the 
scaffoid for his zealous maintenance of his cause. 

"While affairs were of this doubtful complexion in Scot¬ 
land, a rebellion of the most formidable and atrocious cha¬ 
racter broke out in Ireland. The Irish, no longer restrained 
by the wisdom and energy of Strafford, began to conceive 
the idea of throwing off the English yoke. Sir Phelim 


A.D. 

1641. 






380 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. O’Neal, the representative of one of the most ancient fami- 

16*41. j- es j n Ulster, though not the original proposer of the move¬ 
ment, speedily became its head. Being as unscrupulous as 
he was cruel, he forged a commission from the king, and 
then proceeded to massacre all the English Protestants in 
the island, trusting that the English of the pale, as the 
original settlers were called, being chiefly Roman Catholics, 
would acquiesce in the bloody deed, and gladly unite their 
fortunes with the triumphant Irish. No age, no sex was 
spared. The number slain, and death was not the worst 
cruelty that the victims had to endure, has never been 
estimated at less than 40,000; and Charles, horror-struck at 
the sufferings of his innocent subjects, and totally unable 
by his own authority to subdue the rebels, announced to his 
parliament that he committed to them the charge of putting 
down this insurrection, which he looked upon as a settled 
conspiracy against the authority of England, by whatever 
hands it might be wielded. 

The commons gladly availed themselves of the pretext 
thus afforded them for increasing their authority, but though 
they levied money and raised troops, under pretence of their 
being destined to subdue the Irish rebels, they did not send 
them thither, but detained them in England, where they 
could be subservient to objects which they had more at 
heart than the suppression of an insurrection, the import¬ 
ance of which they ignorantly undervalued; for, as the 
feelings which had led Hyde and others to range themselves 
on the king’s side, were becoming so general that the nation 
was beginning to regard him with a return of affection and 
confidence, the more violent members of the opposition tried 
to rekindle the subsiding animosities by framing a remon¬ 
strance on the state of the kingdom, in which they enume¬ 
rated all the grievances of which any complaint had been 
made during the reign. It was only carried through the 
commons by a majority of nine in a very full house; and 
would probably have been lost, had it not been for the 
additional excitement against the Roman Catholics caused 
by the Irish massacre, and by the increasing encourage¬ 
ment to that religion daily afforded by the queen and her 
petulant and ill-judging courtiers. Its promoters looked 
upon this remonstrance as so important that Cromwell told 
Ealkland that, if it had been thrown out, he would have 
sold all his property and quitted the kingdom. It was pre- 


CHARLES I. 


381 


XXXVIII.] 

sented to the king, who, though deeply offended at so gra- a.d. 
tuitous an insult, for a time bridled his displeasure, and 1G41 * 
received it with temper and moderation; but the remon¬ 
strants, flushed with their victory, proceeded to stronger 
measures: bringing in fresh bills calculated to invest the 
parliament with the supreme command of the militia, to 
exclude the bishops from the house of lords, and even 
threatening the assembly in case they refused their co-ope¬ 
ration to such revolutionary enactments. Their violence 
began to give strength to the king; Falkland became secre¬ 
tary of state, and Colepepper chancellor of the exchequer, 1G42. 
while numbers of the country gentry flocked to London to 
assure him of their support. The leaders of the movement 
party had recourse to the mob, which they inflamed and 
excited to acts of formidable riot in the streets, and openly 
countenanced. The bishops were forced to absent them¬ 
selves from parliament by apprehension of personal danger; 
and such furious language was applied to the queen, that at 
last it was commonly believed that she was about to be 
impeached of high treason. 

These dangers, some real and visible, some existing perhaps 
only in rumour, unhappily provoked Charles to return to acts 
of indiscreet violence against those to whose agency he attri¬ 
buted them. At the beginning of the next year, he sent 
the attorney-general to the house of peers to prefer an 
accusation of high treason against lord Kimbolton, and five 
members of the commons, Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Strode, 
and Iiazelrig; and the serjeant-at-arms went at the same 
time to the lower house, to demand the committal of the 
members thus impeached. The commons required time to 
deliberate on so grave an affair; and the next day Charles 
himself repaired to the house to seize them. This most 
unwise as well as most illegal step had been prompted by 
the queen’s rashness, but was frustrated by her indiscretion ; 
she, in her exultation at the triumph she anticipated, 
divulged it to lady Carlisle, who was closely connected with 
Pym, and before the king entered the house, the impeached 
members had withdrawn. They retired into the city, 
whither Charles the next day repaired to demand their 
surrender by the common council; but he did not obtain 
compliance with his demand, and returned to Whitehall, 
followed by the indignant murmurs of the populace, amid 
which were heard the words, “ To your tents, 0 Israel,” 








382 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

the cry of the Israelites when they threw off their allegiance 
to the imperious and misguided Rehoboam. 

By this fatal step Charles had lowered his own authority, 
and irremediably exasperated the objects of his attack; and, 
determined not to witness their triumphant return to their 
places in parliament, he quitted London before the end ot 
the week, and never returned to it till he was brought back 
to receive his death from his victorious enemies. 

On the 10th of January he retired to Hampton Court, 
and from thence to Windsor, while the earl of Newcastle 
went to the north to exert his great influence in that dis¬ 
trict in his behalf. The queen prepared to depart for Hol¬ 
land, nominally in order to conduct the princess Mary to 
the prince of Orange, to whom, though very young, she had 
been married some months before, but, in reality, to nego¬ 
tiate for aid from foreign powers for her husband, in the 
event of his being driven to take up arms, which he was 
beginning to regard as inevitable. Pym, Hampden, and 
their friends made vigorous use of the advantage which the 
king’s imprudence had given them ; passing fresh resolutions 
through both houses of parliament to exclude the bishops, 
to demand entire power over the militia, to require the king 
to place a creature of their own in command of the Tower, 
which both parties considered the key of the metropolis, 
sending orders to Groring, governor of Portsmouth, to admit 
no troops into his garrison without their authority, and 
despatching sir John Hotham to take the command of Hull, 
at that day a place of as great military, as it now is of 
commercial, importance. After much consideration and 
many refusals, Charles granted all their demands, except 
that which referred to the militia; and even that he offered 
to concede with certain modifications, but the parliament 
refused to agree to them, and sent him a fresh address in a 
strangely peremptory tone for subjects to adopt towards 
their king, announcing to him that if he would not grant 
them the command of the militia, they would take it in spite 
of him. 

Both parties issued publications, which were in reality 
appeals to the people; but in these the king, who had now 
reached York, had a manifest advantage. The position 
which the parliament had gradually assumed was legally 
and constitutionally untenable, and the arguments by which 
they endeavoured to support them were as destitute of 


CHARLES I. 


383 


XXXIX.] 

logical reasoning as they were of historical truth. On the 
other hand, the answers of the king, generally drawn up by 
Hyde, were framed with admirable ingenuity, and fortified 
by cogent arguments, drawn from the vast concessions 
which Charles had notoriously made, and from his situation, 
which showed that he could have neither the wish nor the 
power to recal them. Again his partisans in the parlia¬ 
ment took courage from the evident inferiority of their 
opponents in this kind of warfare; and many, even of the 
citizens, showed, by their petitions, that a great revulsion 
had taken place in their feelings and opinions. The leaders 
of the commons began to behave with as open a contempt 
of law and right as had ever been manifested by the king, 
sending members of the opposite party to prison for up¬ 
holding the king’s cause, and even preventing the pre¬ 
sentation of petitions adverse to their views. 

In consequence of these acts the king’s party, though 
daily increasing, became intimidated by the violence of 
their opponents. Many retired to their estates, many re¬ 
paired to the king, and both sides waited with anxiety for 
any event which might determine whether the dispute 
between Charles and his parliament still admitted of an 
amicable termination, or whether the whole kingdom was to 
be plunged into the inextricable miseries of civil war. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

CHARLES I. (CONTINUED). 

The parliament decided on war. On the 23rd of April 
Charles, with a small body of cavalry, was refused ad¬ 
mittance into Hull by sir John Hotham, who, as has been 
already mentioned, had been sent to that town as governor 
by the parliament. Charles proclaimed him a traitor; but 
the parliament justified his act, and declared that to them 
belonged the custody of all fortified places. This was an 
open avowal of rebellion, a distinct declaration of war, for 
which both sides now prepared; but the parliament was 
the most successful, both in the number of troops which 
were collected around its standards, and in the raising oi 
money. The universities, indeed, offered their plate to be 
melted down for the king’s use, though Cromwell seized 


A.D. 

1642. 





384 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. the greater part of that which belonged to Cambridge 

1G42. before it could arrive at its loyal destination; but their 
contributions bore no proportion to the willing loans afforded 
by the citizens of London, to the subscriptions, not wholly 
voluntary, collected from members of parliament, and to 
the sums which, though originally appropriated to the 
suppression of the Irish rebellion, were now seized by the 
commons, and diverted to the purpose of making war upon 
their sovereign. 

While thus proceeding to acts of undisguised violence 
and rebellion, the parliament still professed to be desirous 
of peace, and sent commissioners to York, with proposals 
ostensibly designed to secure that blessing, but in reality 
utterly subversive of the king’s authority. They demanded 
absolute power over the army, and over the fleet, a control 
over the creation of peers, over the appointment of all the 
officers of state, and even over the education and marriage 
of the king’s children. Charles, truly replying that sub¬ 
mission to such terms would render him ordy the image 
and mere shadow of a king, refused them with indignation; 
and as soon as his refusal reached London, the parliament 
openly declared war upon him; not, indeed, unanimously, 
for forty-five members of the lower house, led by sir Ben¬ 
jamin Budyard, opposed the vote; but they were easily 
defeated. In the lords only one voice, that of lord Portland, 
was raised in support of peace. The two houses seized the 
public revenues, ordered the levy of an army of 20,000 foot, 
and nearly 5000 cavalry, giving the command of the whole 
to lord Essex, and appointed a committee of safety, con¬ 
sisting of five lords and ten commoners, to take measures 
for the public defence. 

These events took place at the beginning of July. About 
the same time Charles received from his queen supplies of 
money and ammunition, which she had collected in Hol¬ 
land. The Cavaliers, as his partisans were called, mustered 
strongly (the parliamentarians were called Boundheads, from 
their close-cropped heads, and high-crowned felt hats), and 
on the 22nd of August Charles, in his turn, declared war 
against the parliament by raising his standard at Notting¬ 
ham, a place which he chose as one of the most central in 
the kingdom, but which was not in a district remarkably 
favourable to his interests. Indeed, one of the greatest 
advantages possessed by the parliament at the outset of 


CHARLES I. 


385 


XXXIX.] 

the contest was that their strength was more concentrated a.d. 
and manageable, since the counties in which their influence 1642 * 
predominated lay chiefly in the centre of England, around 
the metropolis, while those friendly to the king being 
situated rather at the extremities of the kingdom, in the 
north and the south-west, had less power of union and 
combination. In the centre of the kingdom Oxford alone, 
preserved in its loyalty by its ancient university, remained 
faithful to him. 

The king’s whole army did not at first amount to above 
1100 men; while the troops of the parliament (though the 
entire force which had been voted was not, of course, raised 
as yet) was so far more numerous, that sir Jacob Astley, 
one of the royalist generals, expressed his belief that they 
might have taken the king in his bed, had they had the 
boldness to attempt it. So strongly did the idea of his 
unprotected condition press on his principal advisers, that 

I they persuaded him to make one more effort to treat with 
his enemies; but they refused even to listen to his mes¬ 
senger ; and in the mean time he was joined by considerable 
reinforcements, and by his nephew, prince Rupert, the 
second son of the elector palatine, who brought to his aid 
the most fearless gallantry, though its very impetuosity too 
often rendered it useless, if not mischievous. 

Rupert, however, gained the first advantage in the war. 
Towards the end of September he fell in with the advanced 
guard of Essex’s army, near Worcester, routing them utterly, 
killing above 400 of them, and taking several standards, 
with the loss of only four or five men; while the result 
of this, the first skirmish of the war, raised the reputation 
of the royal troops so highly, that their numbers were 
rapidly augmented; and when lord Lindsey, an officer 
of great experience, assumed the chief command, they 
amounted to above 10,000 men. Essex had been charged 
to present a petition to the king, requesting him to return 
to London ; and, if he refused its prayer, to endeavour 
to compel his consent by force. Charles would not even 
receive the petition, as coming from proclaimed traitors, 
and accordingly both sides prepared for battle. On the 
23rd of October the two armies met at Edgehill, in War¬ 
wickshire. The disparity between the forces, for the rebels 
greatly outnumbered the royalists, was balanced by the 
superior quality of the king’s troops, and the irresistible 

c c 



386 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. valour of Eupert. Neither in this nor in any other battle 

1642. ^he war was tp iere an y great display of military skill. 
The prince with the first charge of his cavalry swept the 
opposing squadrons from the field, but was unable, or 
perhaps never attempted, to restrain the impetuosity ot 
his men, who pursued the flying enemy too far. On their 
return they found their own infantry, which their advance 
had left exposed, almost as completely broken as the cavalry 
which they had been pursuing, lord Lindsey mortally 
wounded, and a prisoner, while the king’s standard itself 
had for a moment been in the possession of the enemy. 
Even Eupert’s energy was unable to rally his forces, and 
night separated the combatants. The loss in each army 
was nearly equal. Each side at first thought that it had 
been defeated. Each afterwards claimed the victory. At 
night there were earnest debates in both camps, Hampden 
and others urging Essex to renew the battle the next day, 
Eupert insisting on an instant march upon the capital; 
but on each side there were also more moderate councillors, 
who, wishing sincerely for a reconciliation, were unwill¬ 
ing to see such a prospect endangered by any undeniable 
advantage gained even by their own party; and their in¬ 
fluence prevented the adoption of any decisive measures; 
so that Essex retired from the field, leaving the road to 

London open; and though the king did advance towards 

the capital, it was three weeks after the battle before he 
reached Brentford; and by that time the city was able to 

defend itself. The king was baffled, and, retiring to 

Oxford, held his court in that loyal city, which continued 
his head-quarters till the end of the war. 

The wdiole kingdom was now violently agitated. Some 
meetings addressed petitions to the king or to the parlia¬ 
ment to give peace to the land, others urged the vigorous 
prosecution of the war. Adjacent counties, in which the 
one or the other interest was predominant, formed con¬ 
federacies to support it. Some, in which opinions w r ere 
equally divided, agreed to remain wholly neutral, though 
this determination was too impracticable to be long adhered 
to. During the winter the king gained some important 
advantages in the west, where sir Ealph Hopton and sir 
Bevil Granville twice defeated the parliamentary forces, 
while Eupert and lord Hertford took Cirencester, a town 
of great importance, not only as containing a considerable 


CHARLES 1. 


387 


XXXIX.] 


magazine of arms, but as ensuring the king’s coinmunica- a.t>. 
tions with Wales, which lord Glamorgan and sir John 1G43> 
Owen preserved in unwavering fidelity to his interests. 
These events rendered the war so unpopular in London, 
that in March the parliament sent the earl of Northumber¬ 
land and four other commissioners to Oxford, professedly 
to endeavour to effect a peace, but in reality charged with 
proposals as unreasonable as those which Charles had re¬ 
jected the year before, and which would have placed the 
royal authority completely at their mercy. The negotia¬ 
tions, therefore, were speedily broken off; but so strongly 
was it felt by the more moderate members of the parlia¬ 
mentary party, that their failure was owing to the arrogant 
character of the conditions proposed to the king, that some 
of them, with the earl of Northumberland himself at their 
head, entered into a conspiracy to compel the parliament 
to agree to more equitable terms; but before the plot was 
ripe, it was betrayed by Waller, the poet, who had been 
one of the parliamentary commissioners sent to Oxford 
in March, and who was now one of the conspirators. 
Tomkins, his brother-in-law, and a gentleman named 
Chaloner, the chief movers in it, were hanged ; and for a 
time all hope of accommodation seemed at an end fc 

Before the opening of the conferences at Oxford the 
queen returned to England, escaping the fleet of admiral 
Batten, who had been sent to intercept her, and who, being 
frustrated in that object, cannonaded the house at Bur¬ 
lington in which she was lodged, to the great indignation 
of many even of his own party. She was received in triumph 
by the earls of Newcastle and Montrose, and for a time fixed 
her head-quarters at York, planning future operations with 
the chiefs of her own party, and intriguing, in some instances 
with considerable success, with the parliamentary leaders. 

Battle now followed thick upon battle. On the 18th of 
June, a day destined, in a subsequent age, to become me¬ 
morable in the annals, not only of England, but of Europe, 
a skirmish took place at Chalgrove, in Oxfordshire, in which 
Bupert utterly defeated the rebels, and took 200 prisoners; 
and which was made especially important by the death of 
Hampden, who was mortally wounded in the shoulder. Of 
all the parliamentary leaders he had by far the highest repu¬ 
tation : though inclined to the Presbyterians, he was reli¬ 
gious without fanaticism; a zealous and firm friend of 




388 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

ad. liberty, without ever encouraging licence or disorder; he 

IGV3. was affable, eloquent, full of resources, and enterprising, but 
also prudent and cautious ; nor did he ever show that in¬ 
clination towards violent measures for which latterly he was 
rather conspicuous, till Charles exasperated him beyond his 
usual moderation by his ill-advised impeachment, and after¬ 
wards by his illegal attempt to arrest him. Charles himself 
esteemed him so highly that, on hearing of his wound, lie 
sent to inquire after him, and to offer him the services of 
his own surgeon; but his magnanimous kindness could not 
avail the dying man, who expired a few days afterwards 
in great suffering, regretted by the best and wisest men 
of either party. Generally this year the advantage was 
on the king’s side. After an indecisive action at Lansdowne, 
sir W. Waller was totally defeated near Devizes by lord 
Wilmot, and though he took Gloucester, Hereford, and 
some other towns in those districts, and though Lichfield 4 
and Reading also fell into the hands of the parliamentary 
leaders, these successes were more than balanced by the 
taking of Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, which sur¬ 
rendered to Rupert at the end of June. 

Essex now strongly urged the parliament to treat for 
peace: the lords were well inclined to take such advice, 
and, as their ill success had only rendered the commons more 
obstinately determined to reject it, there seemed a great 
prospect of the two houses quarrelling in a way that must 
have proved fatal to their cause, when Charles for a time 
united them again by a rash proclamation, in which he de¬ 
clared that the number of members who had seceded, and 
the violence which had extinguished all freedom of debate, 
had deprived them of all right to the name of a parliament, 
which, consequently, he should no longer give them. At 
last, in August, a majority, even of the commons, voted for 
peace; but the more violent members forced the tellers to 
take the division over again, and the majority was now pro¬ 
nounced to have decided the other way. Even the mob, 

4 There was no town in England in which the rebels committed more hor¬ 
rible sacrilege than at Lichfield. Not only did they destroy the ornaments of 
the cathedral, and plunder it of the communion plate, but they hunted cats in 
it, and baptized a calf in the font in derision of the holy sacrament of baptism 
It has been said, apparently with much truth, that the fanatic fury of "the 
Puritans during this civil war brought such a scandal upon the reformed reli¬ 
gion, that it stopped its progress in France and Spain more than all the perse¬ 
cutions inflicted on the Protestants in those countries. 


CHARLES I. 


3S9 


XXXIX.] 

and the common council of London, petitioned for peace, a.d. 
and the manifestly fraudulent character of the recent votes l,;43 - 
only increased the discontent. Pym was attacked by name ; 
and the general feeling was not allayed by the increased 
tury of Martin and other equally disreputable demagogues, 
who to encourage their partisans began to talk openly of 
the king’s destruction. 

The king’s councils were divided by similar dissensions; 
at last, so great were the expectations which were founded 
on the divisions of the parliament, that Charles resolved to 
unite all his forces in a march upon London, and summoned 
Newcastle from the north ; but that nobleman, through an 
absurd jealousy of prince Rupert, refused obedience ; and 
the project, though one most promising of success, was 
necessarily laid aside. 

On the 13th of July the king and queen met after a 
long absence almost on the field of battle of the preceding 
year at Edgehill ; a meeting almost as injurious as it was 
joyful to the affectionate, but too facile Charles ; as, though 
she was brave, ready-witted, and sincerely desirous of his 
triumph, she was ever the advocate of the most imperious 
and unyielding measures, and so jealous of her influence 
over him, as constantly to oppose the most prudent advice, 
and to thwart the wisest plans that proceeded from his most 
experienced and faithful councillors. 

I have called the queen brave: the times made even 
women soldiers and heroines. Scott has immortalized lady 
Derby, the fearless defender of Latham House, of whom w r e 
shall have to speak hereafter; and this year also lady 
Arundel, of Wardour, displayed a courage and fortitude, I 
had almost said a degree of military skill, that might have been 
envied by many of her husband’s comrades. She was a sister 
of the gallant lord Glamorgan, and her own lord was with his 
sovereign at Oxford, when sir Edward Hungerford, with 
1300 men, summoned her to surrender Wardour Castle to 
the parliament. The heroic lady held her husband’s com¬ 
mands to keep the castle for his king higher than the 
threats of the Roundhead general, wlio was not ashamed to 
employ cannon against a woman. Her entire garrison of 
both sexes amounted to barely fifty persons; but, while the 
men fought on the walls, the women brought them ammuni¬ 
tion and prepared their food. A week did this scanty gar¬ 
rison resist all the efforts of the assailants, who were nearly 







A.D. 

1G43. 


390 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

thirty times their number, nor was it till two mines had 
breached the wall, and her ammunition and provisions were 
exhausted, that lady Arundel surrendered the castle on a 
capitulation, the terms of which were shamefully violated by 
her unmanly conquerors. 

In August the king laid siege to Gloucester, which however 
was skilfully relieved by Essex, who recovered Cirencester 
also ; but Rupert, though he had failed to intercept him on his 
march from London, pursued him with unwearied vigour, 
and arrived first- at Newbury, thus cutting him off from his 
return to the capital. Experience was rapidly giving the 
prince military skill, and he now counselled his uncle to 
remain secure in the strong position which he occupied, 
letting the embarrassments of their situation produce their 
natural effect in sowing despondency and dissension among 
the parliamentary forces. But the fatal influence of the 
queen caused this judicious advice to be disregarded, and, 
on the 20th of September, Charles marched to attack the 
enemy, who were strongly posted, in numbers much greater 
than his own, on a rising ground on the north-west side of 
the town. The battle was as unskilfully carried on as it 
had been rashly begun. In vain did Rupert, who exerted 
himself with all his usual intrepidity to carry out counsels 
which he disapproved, lose half his cavalry in a fruitless 
attempt to break the serried array of pikes, which was the 
chief weapon of the subborn infantry of the Roundheads. 
Night separated the combatants after a long and bloody 
conflict, which, though indecisive in appearance, left all sub¬ 
stantial advantages of victory to Essex, who had won an 
open road to his head-quarters, though his rear-guard was 
fiercely attacked and routed the next day by the inde¬ 
fatigable prince. The loss on each side was nearly balanced 
as to numbers; but that of Essex’s army fell mainly on the 
common troopers, while the king lost some of the noblest 
and most esteemed of his adherents. On that sad field fell 
lord Sunderland, lord Carnarvon, and, above all, lord Falk¬ 
land, a man of the most eminent talents, and still more 
admirable virtues, though scarcely fitted for such turbulent 
times. An equally uncompromising foe to tyranny, whether 
exercised by king or people, he had vigorously opposed all 
the earlier measures of Charles and his ministers; but when 
the parliament showed a design, under pretence of securing 
the liberties of the subject, to deprive the king of all legiti- 






CIIATILES I. 


391 


XXXIX.] 

mate authority, he came over to his side, and, as his secretary 
of state, had been one of his wisest and most salutary coun¬ 
cillors. Amid these miserable commotions his constant 
prayer had been for peace, which was thus granted to him¬ 
self, though denied to his country, for the welfare of which 
he was more solicitous than for his own. 

In the north the struggle was carried on with similar 
vigour, and with fortunes almost equally balanced. The earl 
of Newcastle, now created a marquis, had collected a large 
army for the king, while lord Fairfax commanded that of the 
parliament, having under him his son, sir Thomas Fairfax, 
and Cromwell, who were fast rising into notice and import¬ 
ance. At first Fairfax gained some trifling advantages, but 
on the last day of June Newcastle defeated him at Ather¬ 
ton Moor, so completely that the battle was followed by the 
almost total dispersion of his army; and the danger was so 
great that lord Manchester quitted the eastern counties for 
Yorkshire, where he retrieved the prospects of his party by 
defeating the Royalists at Horncastle, in October. 

As, however, it "was clear that time, by allowing the justice 
of the royal cause to be seen, was gradually adding strength 
to the king’s party, the parliament sought to reinforce 
themselves by aid from Scotland. There was no country in 
Europe in which religious rancour prevailed jvith greater 
virulence, and the attachment of Charles to the episcopal 
form of Church government, which he believed to be the 
direct ordinance of Grod, was sufficient to counterbalance all 
other considerations in the minds of the greater part of the 
nation. The parliament sent commissioners to Edinburgh, 
the most influential of whom was sir Harry Yane, and, in 
the autumn of this year, they drew up what was called the 
Solemn League and Covenant, by which they proposed to 
bind both nations, and which the parliament, having first 
subscribed it themselves, ordered to be received by all under 
their authority. The Scots, delighted at having, as they 
supposed, by this measure put down prelacy for ever, pre¬ 
pared to support their allies by arms ; and, by the end of 
the year, had collected 20,000 men, under lord Leven, to 
invade England ; while the king, on his side, procured from 
the marquis of Ormond, who had nearly pacified Ireland, of 
which he was the lord-lieutenant, the greater part of the army 
which he had been previously employing against the rebels 
in that country. 


A.D. 

1643. 







392 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. To cement the union with the Scots, the parliament, during 

1043. ^] ie w inter of 1643, applied themselves with renewed vigour 
to the reformation of the Church. Thousands of the epis¬ 
copal clergy were deprived of their livings ; a general plan 
of eccbsiastical government was prepared by a synod of 
divines appointed for that purpose; and a general system of 
severity was enforced, greatly at variance with all the pre¬ 
vious habits and feelings of the nation. In the towns the 
theatres were closed, in the villages the Maypoles were cut 
down, and all popular recreations forbidden as the most 
heinous sins ; till at last, in the height of their success, fresh 
divisions appeared among the victorious party, and the 
Presbyterians, who had hitherto prevailed, began to feel a 
jealousy of the Independents, whose views evidently pointed, 
beyond the overthrow of the Church, at the destruction of 
the monarchy; while the Independents, who now openly 
avowed their principles and their hopes, hated the Presby¬ 
terians as much as the Cavaliers. The two parties united 
cordially in only one measure, the abolition of the liberty of 
the press, commanding, in the summer of 1643, that hence¬ 
forth all publications should be subjected to a strict ex¬ 
amination. 

1044. The reinforcements which Ormond sent to the king from 
Ireland, though consisting of no less than ten regiments, 
were rather of disservice to his cause; for not only were 
they defeated by Fairfax within six weeks of their landing, 
but the general feeling against papists, which it was asserted 
they were, led several of his most trusted officers to go over 
to the parliament. Charles, however, now began to trust to 
civil as well as to military operations. He had been led to 
conceive the idea of issuing a proclamation to dissolve the 
parliament, and was only dissuaded by the strong represen¬ 
tations of the futility of such a step, and of the fruitless ex¬ 
asperation which it would cause, that were addressed to him 
by Hyde. Instead of this measure he convened a second 
parliament, consisting of those members of both houses who 
adhered to his interests, which met at Oxford, in January, 
1644, greatly superior to the London parliament in the 
number of peers, though proportionably inferior in the 
number of members of the house of commons. He de¬ 
sired to make this assembly an instrument of negotiations for 
peace, but his hopes were disappointed, because the London 
parliament refused to consider that assembled at Oxford as 


CHARLES I. 


393 


XXXIX.] 

a body of equal authority -with themselves ; while Charles 
persisted in withholding any acknowledgment that they 
were a parliament at all. So, after some fruitless messages, 
he prorogued the Oxford assembly after it had voted him a 
grant of money, and, in imitation of the London parliament, 
had imposed an excise, a tax previously unknown, oil dif¬ 
ferent commodities. So regular in form were the measures 
adopted by both sides in such a time of universal commotion 
and violence. It is worth noticing, as another proof of the 
deeply-seated reverence for law and order which still pervaded 
the whole nation, and which makes this revolution of which 
we are speaking such a striking contrast to that which broke 
up the institutions of a neighbouring country, that, through¬ 
out the whole of these sad times, the judges continued to go 
their circuits as usual, even through those counties where the 
war was actually raging. 

At the beginning of the year 1644, the Scottish army, 
under lord Leven, crossed the borders; and, encouraged by 
their advance, the parliament began to prepare for a more 
vigorous prosecution of the war. Besides the Scots, they 
had now on foot four armies, under lord Essex, lord Man¬ 
chester, lord Fairfax, and sir W. Waller, and their united 
numbers exceeded 55,000 men; while the royal forces were very 
inferior in number, and were much -worse supplied with money 
and the other requisites for war. The king was at Oxford 
with the queen, now within two months of her confinement, 
when he received certain intelligence that Essex and Waller 
were about to combine their forces in an attack on that 
city. Henrietta removed for safety to Exeter, and never 
saw her husband again. He remained behind till the city 
was almost entirely surrounded, when, by an able movement, 
he quitted Oxford with a body of light troops, and marched 
northward; then, hearing that on receiving news of his 
movements the parliamentary generals had raised the siege, 
and that, after a violent quarrel with Essex, Waller was 
pursuing him alone, he turned back on his path, re-entered 
Oxford, and, at the end of June, gave Waller a severe defeat 
at Cropredy Bridge. 

It was a shortlived exultation with which this victory 
filled his heart. Only three days afterwards it was counter¬ 
balanced by the fatal day of Marston Moor, the greatest 
battle which had taken place, and the most fatal blow which 
had been struck in the war. 




A.D. 

1644, 



394 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

1644. 


[CH. 


CHAPTER XL. 

CHARLES I. (CONTINUE!)). 

In the early part of the year Rupert had been reaping abun¬ 
dant laurels in the centre of the kingdom. With infinitely 
smaller numbers he had routed sir John Meldrum and re¬ 
lieved Newark, and had followed up this success by com¬ 
pelling another army to raise the siege of Latham House, 
where the heroic lady Derby had been for three long months 
amazing England by the gallant defence which she was 
making against 3000 of the choicest troops of the parliament. 
Her garrison consisted of 300 men and herself. Saragossa 
itself was not more intrepidly defended. In vain did Rigby, 
who had been left in command by Fairfax, procure a huge 
mortar, the shells from which laid the inner buildings of the 
castle in ruins. The garrison sallied out by night, and bore 
it in triumph within the walls. Four times each day, for a 
brief period, did the immortal band cease from its human 
efforts, and retire to the chapel to implore the protection of 
the God of battles; the rest of the day and night, with 
hearts so dauntless that they scarcely noticed the decay of 
their strength, or the diminution of their numbers, did they 
toil at the defence of their battered walls, till, on the 25th 
of May (it was on the 28th of February that Fairfax had 
first summoned the castle to surrender), the besiegers re¬ 
treated at the approach of Rupert, and sought refuge in 
Bolton, which could not save them from the just vengeance 
that their cruelty had provoked. 

He had scarcely performed these important services when 
he received a pressing despatch from Charles, commanding 
him to hasten to relieve York, where lord Newcastle was 
closely blockaded by the three armies of Fairfax, Manches¬ 
ter, and Leven, amounting to 30,000 men. He had scarcely 
20,000. Without delay he hastened to that important city, 
outmanoeuvred the enemy, passed through their lines, and 
then, conceiving that his orders “ to beat the rebels’ army 
of both kingdoms” left him no alternative, he prepared to 
attack the beleaguering hosts. It was a fatal resolution. 
At the beginning of the war the superior quality of the 
king’s troops had constantly made amends for their inferiority- 
in numbers; but Cromwell perceiving, as he told Hampden, 


CHARLES I. 


395 


XL.] 

that such a rabble as they then led on, “ composed of decayed 
tapsters and serving-men,” would never be brought to stand 
before the gentlemen who, with their hardy retainers, formed 
the bulk of the royal force, had begun to remodel the army 
after hi3 own fashion, finding in the zeal of fanaticism the 
courage and energy which his adversaries derived from the 
natural gallantry of their high blood; and his own regiment 
especially was formed of “ God-fearing men,” as he termed 
them, furious zealots who, in obedience to the fancied dic¬ 
tates of religion, were as incapable of fear as of moderation 
or humanity. Newcastle strongly urged Rupert to be con¬ 
tent with having saved York, and to leave the hostile armies 
to melt away by their own difficulties and dissensions ; nor 
was he without good grounds for his expectations of such a 
result, for the Scotch and English regiments were beginning 
to quarrel. More than one general was secretly actuated by 
jealousy of Cromwell, and altogether there was so much dis¬ 
union in their camp, that, had the news of Waller’s defeat 
at Cropredy reached them sooner, we can scarcely doubt that 
it would have caused the separation of the three armies: but 
the prince considered his orders imperative, and determined 
to fight at once. Newcastle bore his part in the conflict 
merely, as he said, as a volunteer, refusing any share in the 
conduct of an operation of which he disapproved. It was 
late in the day of the 2nd of July when the prince ordered 
prayers to be read in front of each regiment of his army, and 
when the voice of supplication was succeeded by the battle- 
cry and the roar of artillery. He himself and his irresistible 
lifeguards on the left wing fell at once on the Scots, nobly 
seconded by Goring, who, though destitute of honour and 
principle, was endued with great skill and courage, and who 
never displayed them more conspicuously. The Scots fled 
in confusion, though their flight could not save them from 
the slaughter which was mercilessly dealt among them ; but 
on the other side of the field the fate of the battle was far 
different. Byron with his cavalry had advanced imprudently 
from the strong position in which he had been placed, and 
Cromwell’s ironsides, who won their name that day, charged 
them while in disorder, and broke them as completely as 
the Scots were routed on the other wing. In the centre the 
battle raged sternly, and for some time with equal fortune. 
Lord Eairfax with his infantry was gallantly resisted by 


A.D. 

1644. 





396 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. Cavendish, who commanded the regiments which had been. 

1044. furnished from the city of York, and which were known in 
the army as Newcastle’s lambs, till at last, their flank being 
uncovered by the rout of Byron, Cromwell turned their own 
artillery against their rapidly-lessening phalanx, and they 
perished, almost to a man, on the ground on which they had 
first been posted, and which they held even in death. Ter¬ 
rible slaughter had been dealt among each army ; a great 
portion of each was driven from the field, and still the strife 
was but half over. 'Rupert and Cromwell, each returning 
from what they fancied a secured victory, found themselves 
opposed to each other, though the face of the battle was now 
so changed that Rupert occupied the ground on which the 
parliamentary forces had stood in the earlier part of the day, 
while the ironsides were charging him from what had then 
been his own position. His own resolution was as un¬ 
daunted, his own energy as unfaltering, as at the first tri¬ 
umphant onset of the day; but his followers, fatigued by 
their own success, and dispirited at finding a more for¬ 
midable enemy than ever still in their front, were no longer 
a match for the persevering valour with which fanaticism 
inspired the fierce Puritans. They were broken at once, 
and fled unresistingly from the field, leaving baggage, 
artillery, ammunition, and standards to the conquerors. 

The victory was great; its effects were greater still. It 
placed the north of England at the mercy of the parliament, 
and deprived the king of the services of Newcastle, who had 
made great sacrifices for his cause, and who still possessed 
great influence, but who now, disgusted at the disrespect of 
his advice shown by Rupert, and at the calamity which had 
followed, quitted the kingdom, and retired to Holland. 
Rupert himself showed that true courage which shines 
brightest in adversity, and, disdaining to despair, collected 
6000 men, the remnant of his army, and retired in good 
order towards Shrewsbury, where he expected to meet the 
king; but Charles, on the defeat of Waller, had pursued 
Essex into Cornwall, where, if it had not been for the 
licentiousness and insubordination of his officers, he would 
have taken the whole rebel army prisoners. Essex, how¬ 
ever, escaped in a boat; his cavalry took advantage of a 
fog to elude the carelessness of Gforing, who had been 
despatched from the north immediately after the late battle; 


CHARLES I. 


397 


XL.] 

and the infantry under Skippon capitulated, on condition of 
being allowed to retire, with the surrender of their arms, 
artillery, ammunition, and baggage. 

These events, even when apparently most favourable to 
Charles, and contributing, as the operations against Essex 
certainly did, greatly to his personal credit, were yet injurious 
to his interests, by exalting the Independents at the expense 
of the Presbyterians. Essex was one of the chiefs of the 
Presbyterians, and his victories had never been very decisive ; 
nor, if his detractors were to be believed, had they ever been 
pushed to the utmost; while the great success of Marston 
Moor was universally attributed to Cromwell, the pride of 
the Independents, -whose reputation and influence were daily 
increasing, and whose ambitious views were rapidly becoming 
more developed. The king returned towards London, and 
fought a second battle, at Newbury, against lord Manchester. 
Not once in the whole war did he meet his enemies on equal 
terms. Here he was, as usual, outnumbered, and was only 
saved by the shortness of the day (it was the end of Octo¬ 
ber) from a total overthrow. 

It was for a long time the character of this war, that ill 
success in one quarter was balanced by good fortune in 
another. Montrose had been hastening to join Bupert 
before Marston Moor, and the two gallant chiefs had met at 
liichmond a day or two after the battle. Montrose re¬ 
turned to the Highlands, where his influence soon collected 
a small body of men, and, uniting them with some troops 
which had been sent over to him from Ireland, he proceeded 
to perform a series of exploits more resembling the fictions 
of romance than the sober realities of history. His whole 
force consisted of about 2400 men, almost destitute of all 
the supplies which are usually thought indispensable to an 
army; and with this handful of what could scarcely be 
called soldiers, since nearly half of them had never been 
under arms before, and a large proportion had no arms now, 
he proceeded to attack lord Eleho, who was lying near Perth 
with 6000 infantry and 700 cavalry, all well appointed and 
full of confidence. Montrose’s cavalry consisted of two men, 
a groom with a led horse for himself, and a friend who was 
too lame to walk. Never was it more conspicuously seen 
how the genius and resolution of one great man can out¬ 
weigh the most fearful odds. Bows and arrows had hardly 
been seen in Scotland since Bruce had defied them at Ban- 


A.D. 

1644 . 






398 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. nockburn, but not only were they now brought into action 
at Tippermuir, but there was not enough even of them. 
Montrose’s powder was soon exhausted; in vain did Elcho 
seek to check his advance with a shower of musketry; his 
men replied with stones which they picked up from the 
ground, the only missiles they had left, and charged straight 
on till they came to close quarters with the enemy, who fled 
in confusion, leaving 2000 men dead on the field, and a 
great many prisoners, with whom the conqueror entered 
Perth in triumph. He lost no time, but proceeded north¬ 
wards to Aberdeen, where he defeated lord Burley in an 
equally decisive manner; and, after some more skirmishes, 
which were all attended with similar success, finding that 
the greater part of his army had returned home to secure 
their booty, and to rest after their rapid marches, he retired 
with his Irish forces to the Highlands, to wait till they 
should rejoin his standard. 

1645 . With the return of spring, he pursued the same marvel¬ 
lous career, his forces scarcely ever amounting to more 
than half the number of the enemy. Baillie, an officer of 
high reputation, as a pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, was in 
vain brought from England to endeavour to check his pro¬ 
gress. He routed Argyle at Inverlochy; when apparently 
hemmed in by Baillie and Urrey among the Grampian Hills, 
he displayed as great skill in a retreat under the most diffi¬ 
cult circumstances, as he had ever shown energy in an attack. 
Again and again he was victorious. Urrey and Baillie 
divided their forces the more surely to intercept him, as 
each of their divisions was far superior in number to his 
whole force. He scattered the one at Auldcarne, and the 
other at Alford; and at Kilsyth, on the 15th of August, he 
gave Baillie a second defeat of so complete a character, that 
there was no army remaining to the Covenanters in any 
part of Scotland. It was his last triumph; for though many 
of the nobles were won over by it to declare for the royal 
cause, and though he was able to gratify his own feelings bv 
releasing those of his friends who had been thrown into 
prison at Edinburgh, this was but a barren result, nay, it 
was even injurious to him. Defeat might have shown his 
men the necessity of keeping together; the security of 
victory gave them courage to separate. Some wished to 
secure the booty that they had acquired, others to repair the 
injuries done to their farms in their absence. Under one 


CHARLES 1. 



399 , 


pretext or another the greater part of his forces melted away, a.d 
and left him little able to resist the army sent from England 1045 
under Leslie. 

Under any circumstances, even if left to himself, he had 
an arduous task before him: success was rendered impossi¬ 
ble by the machinations of others. The too easy Charles, 
so prone to trust every one as to be incapable of reposing a 
steady confidence in any one, was induced to interfere with 
his command, and sent him positive orders to quit the High¬ 
lands, and to descend towards the borders. His scanty 
numbers, he had barely 600 men, and the carelessness of his 
scouts prevented him from obtaining accurate information of 
Leslie’s movements, till he w~as attacked by him at Philip- 
haugh,near Selkirk, on the 13th of September, with upwards of 
6000 men. It is almost incredible how long Montrose, with 
his handful of men, made victory seem doubtful; but at last 
numbers prevailed, and he was forced to retreat, leaving 
more than half his force dead or prisoners to the enemy. 

The Covenanters treated the captives with their usual cruelty; 
the common men were butchered in cold blood, those of 
higher rank were put to death with the forms of legal execu¬ 
tion ; but, however unworthily used, their triumph was com¬ 
plete, and in Scotland the success of the Roundheads was 
permanently established. 

I have related the chief events of Montrose’s wondrous, 
but brief career, 'without mentioning the progress of affairs 
in England during the same period, to which it is now 
time to return. In the autumn the jealousy of Cromwell 
entertained by the Presbyterians increased so much, that 
they would have impeached him could they have seen any 
probability of success; and, when they abandoned that 
design, they were driven by their fear of him again to seek 
to make peace with the king, sending commissioners, the 
chief of whom were Hollis and Whitelocke, a lawyer of 
high reputation, to Oxford. Charles sent an answer to 
the proposals which they brought by envoys of his own ; 
and, in the beginning of the year 1645, it was agreed 
that forty commissioners, twenty-three appointed by the 
parliament and seventeen by the king, should meet at 
Uxbridge, to endeavour to terminate the war, and to dis¬ 
cuss the provisions of a treaty which should have that 
effect. 

Put in the mean time the Independents were not idle. 









400 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. They were as resolved on war as the Presbyterians were 

](>4o. (J es i rous of peace; and, in order to disarm the latter, after 
Cromwell in a long speech had announced to the commons 
that the people in general believed that the only object of 
the members of both houses was to enrich themselves by 
the protraction of the war, one of the most obscure of his 
tools, named Zouch Tate, proposed a law, known afterwards 
as the Self-denying Ordinance, to make members of par¬ 
liament incapable of any civil or military office. Though 
the entire plan of the Independents was not divined, it 
was rejected by the lords, whom it was resolved to terrify 
into a subsequent acquiescence. Sir John Hotham had 
committed the first overt act of rebellion against the king 
by refusing to admit him into Hull. He and his son were 
now accused of a design at a later period to surrender that 
important town. Being both Presbyterians, they were con¬ 
victed and executed, and other commanders met a similar 
fate. Their doom was only the prelude to that of a more 
illustrious victim. Archbishop Laud had now been in 
prison four years. As Straflord marched proudly to his 
death, the aged prelate, from the window of his cell, had 
addressed his last benediction to his departing friend, and 
had ever since been kept in close confinement without a 
trial. It was now hurried on with the most indecent 
rapidity; yet, as in the case of Strafford, it was found im¬ 
possible to convict him of any act resembling high treason ; 
and, as it was impossible to destroy him by a bill of at¬ 
tainder, which required the king’s consent, the parliament 
resolved that their own ordinance should be sufficient, and 
on the 3rd of January he was beheaded on Tower Hill. 

At the end of the same month the conferences opened 
at Uxbridge. Peace was absolutely indispensable to Charles, 
whose difficulties were manifestly increasing, and whose 
very army in the preceding autumn had communicated their 
anxiety for it to the parliamentary generals; nor, except 
Rupert, and a few Roman Catholics, who had not accom¬ 
panied the queen, did any one raise a voice against it; 
yet the counsels of these few, and the letters of the 
queen, ever urging him to make no concessions, prevailed 
so strongly, that he was but little inclined to second the 
efforts of his commissioners. Peace was equally necessary 
for the Presbyterians, whose influence was daily yielding to 
the superior vigour of the Independents, and'who were 





CHARLES T. 


401 


XL.] 

thoroughly alarmed at the violence of their language, and *.n. 
scarcely concealed designs, which were further revealed to 16 45. 
them by more than one event which happened during 
these negotiations; yet their hatred of episcopacy prevailed 
so far over every other consideration in the minds of this 
party, and of the Scottish commissioners, that they, too, 
were, in their hearts, as little inclined to peace as the king, 
unless they could impose it on him with the lordly voice 

I of conquerors, a position to which as yet they had no 
pretensions. 

The fruitless result of the conferences was owing solely 
to these undue pretensions on their part. The king allowed 
his own inclinations to be so overruled by his commissioners, 
that he offered to consent to such restrictions on the power 
of bishops as would have left the episcopal authority little 
more than a name. He consented to entrust the command 
of the militia for seven years to a board, half the members 
of which were to be appointed by the parliament, and would 
perhaps have made still further advances towards their de¬ 
mands, had he not received news of Montrose’s victory at In- 
verlochv, which rekindled in his breast hopes of a restoration 
to his former power on less rigorous conditions. The Pres¬ 
byterians, too, were on their side encouraged by the news 
of the capture of Shrewsbury, which was taken about the 
same time, and which w r as a place of great consequence, as 
a sort of key to North Wales, a district previously wholly 
in the king’s interest. So at the end of twenty days the 
conferences were broken off*; and Charles, to show to the 
whole nation that it was not he who had been the obstacle 
to peace, published an account of the concessions which he 
had offered, to which the parliament gave no contradiction 
or reply. 

In the mean time the Independents, relieved from op¬ 
position by the leaders of the presbyterian party being thus 
engaged at Uxbridge, had concerted and carried out a plan 
for new-modelling the army, consolidating the different 
divisions into one force of 20,000 men, of whom sir Thomas 
Fairfax was to be the general; and in his commission all 
respectful mention of the king’s personal safety was for the 
first time omitted. Essex’s commission was not formally 
cancelled, but he was virtually superseded, and soon after¬ 
wards he resigned his command. Lord Manchester did the 
same; and, as their appointments had been a principal 

d d 






402 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a d. reason with the house of lords for refusing their consent 

1G45. the Self-denying Ordinance, they now passed a new bill, 
brought in with the same object as the former, though it 
no longer prevented members of either house from receiving 
fresh appointments. 

Cromwell, as a member of the lower house, ought to have 
resigned his command, as well as the other officers who 
were thus disbanded ; but that was not the object of those 
who promoted this ordinance. Accordingly, his troopers 
were easily excited to declare that they would serve under 
no one else. He quitted London on pretence of bringing 
them into submission to the orders of the house; and, 
rendering himself useful to Fairfax, that general, utterly 
destitute of any but military talent, and, from his honesty 
of purpose, peculiarly fitted to the be tool of so crafty an 
intriguer, applied for leave to retain him for a short time 
longer. The two generals together prepared to lay siege 
to Oxford ; but, after a short time, the king’s march towards 
the eastern counties supplied a plea for reinvesting Crom¬ 
well with his former command, and despatching him into 
Cambridgeshire, where his influence was great, for the 
purpose of opposing Charles’s efforts. 

Before Charles quitted Oxford to join [Rupert, he had, pro¬ 
bably in the hope of distracting his enemies by a division of 
the royal forces, despatched the prince of Wales, then a boy 
of fifteen, with the title of generalissimo, to the western 
counties, with Hyde, Colepepper, and lord Capel, as his 
council. He never saw his son again, who now took the 
nominal command of Goring’s army, which was besieging 
Taunton with an apparent certainty of success. The king 
himself had stormed Leicester, making prisoners of the 
numerous garrison, and was advancing towards Oxford, 
which he believed to be in danger, when at Naseby, in 
Northamptonshire,'he unexpectedly found himself close to 
the forces of Fairfax and Cromwell, who, alarmed by his 
progress, had again united in search of him. They were 
greatly superior to him in numbers, for he had little more 
than 8000 men; and his most prudent advisers counselled 
him to avoid a battle till he could be joined by reinforce¬ 
ments, some of which were known to be on their w r ay from 
Wales, while others might reasonably be expected from the 
west as soon as Taunton had fallen. Unhappily the advice 
of Eupert, always eager for battle, prevailed, and it was 


CHARLES I. 


403 


XLI.] 

resolved to fight. The 14th of June beheld the last battle 
of any importance that took place between the rival parties. 
It was stubbornly contested in every part of the field, 
except where Rupert charged at the head of his cavalry. 
As usual nothing could resist him; but, as usual, he pursued 

I his routed enemies too far. Charles, too, fought as a king 
should fight, whose kingdom is at stake ; and when Rupert 
returned from the chace he found all in disorder, save where 
he was still trying to rally his disheartened troopers for 
one more charge. He might have succeeded, he might at 
least have found an honourable death, when one of his 
courtiers, lord Carnwath, seized probably with a sudden 
panic, with the exclamation that he was “running upon 
his death,” seized the bridle of his horse, arrested his 
onward course, and changed his courage (he was ever the 
too easy slave of impulse) to despair. Then all was con¬ 
fusion and dismay. The number of those on the royal side 

I who fell in the battle was less than that of those who had 
fallen in the ranks of the parliament; but the rout was 

! total, the pursuit long, and the pursuers pitiless. Nearly 
half the defeated army, all the standards, and all the artil¬ 
lery fell into their hands; and they showed how little they 
deserved their victory by'murdering and mangling even 
the women who had followed in the wake of the royal 
troops. 

CHAPTER XLI. 

CHARLES I. (CONTINUED). 

"We may pass rapidly over the rest of the war, which was, 
in effect, terminated by this blow, without delay. Fairfax 
marched to the west to subdue the strongholds still remain¬ 
ing to the king in that district. Town after town sur¬ 
rendered ; and even Rupert, who had thrown himself into 
Bristol, found it impossible to preserve that important city. 
Charles, after one or two marches and countermarches, 
retired to Oxford, where he remained during the winter, 
while the prince of Wales made his escape from the king¬ 
dom, and joined the queen, who, in the preceding autumn, 
had fled to Paris. 

The king’s council prevailed on him to make fresh pro¬ 
posals of peace to the parliament; but, though that body 

d d 2 


A.D. 

1 64o. 








404 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.D. had lately caused its numbers to be filled up by issuing 
f res h writs to the places, the representatives of which ad¬ 
hered to the king, the Independents were in no wise 
weakened by the influx of new members, and they prevailed 
so completely, that his messengers were refused admittance 
into the city. Success had only stimulated their ferocity. 
They now sequestered all the property of the Royalists, sold 
the estates of the bishops, and, by a decree of unheard-of 
atrocity, forbade any quarter to be given to any of the Irish 
in the king’s service, who henceforth were slain by hun¬ 
dreds in cold blood. Charles offered to go to London in 
person to treat; but, in spite of the efforts of the Presby¬ 
terians, this offer too was refused, the ostensible plea for 
this refusal being the negotiations into which, through the 
agency of lord Glamorgan, he had entered with the Irish 
Roman Catholics to come to his assistance. It had also 
happened that among the booty taken at Naseby was a 

1G46. copy of much of the correspondence of Charles with his 
queen, from which it appeared that he had also sought aid 
from the continental sovereigns; and that, if he were 
guided by the queen, as it was always probable would be 
the case, he would never make peace, as long as war 
afforded him a chance of the re-establishment of his autho¬ 
rity. At last, in utter despair, he quitted Oxford in dis¬ 
guise, and, by the advice of Montreuil, the French am¬ 
bassador, who had been negotiating with the leaders of the 
Scots, to secure him a safe retreat in that country, he 
repaired to the camp of lord Leven, near Newark, where 
he soon discovered that he was regarded as a prisoner. 
Leven marched northwards with his prize, whose position 
only aggravated the dissensions between the rival factions 
in the parliament, till Charles began to hope, and Cromwell 
to fear, that the Presbyterians would unite with him, and 
restore him to liberty. Bitter feelings were engendered on 
both sides. At last the Independents prevailed, and caused 
several of the presbyterian regiments to be disbanded; 
while the Scottish Covenanters, to disguise their real hopes 
and designs, began to treat their enemies with a severity 
of which as yet there had been no example in this war, 
executing the noblest of Montrose’s comrades as traitors. 
The king himself they compelled to listen to their preachers, 
in order, as they said, that he might be instructed in the 
right way; and these lectures were only terminated by the 




CHARLES I. 


405 


XLI.] 

arrival of an embassy from tbe parliament, offering him a.d. 
peace on condition of his adopting the covenant, abolishing 1(i4(5 * 
episcopacy, surrendering the command of the army and 
navy for twenty years, and proclaiming nearly a hundred 
of his most faithful friends traitors, for their allegiance to 
him. Humiliating as these demands were, every one, even 
Montreuil, speaking the sentiments of the queen, advised 
him to submit; but he could not resolve to humble himself 
so far, and, to the great joy of the Independents, who had 
most unwillingly been compelled to join in the proposal of 
these terms, he refused them, again demanding leave to go 
to London to confer in person with the parliament. 

Meanwhile the question, how he should be disposed of, 
raised a fresh dispute. The Scotch army w r as on the point 
of retiring to their own country, and the assembly voted 
that if he would not take the covenant, he should be re¬ 
fused an asylum; at the same time the army demanded a 
large sum from the English parliament as arrears of pay. 

The parliament voted that they alone had the right to dis¬ 
pose of the king, and at last the Scots agreed to deliver him 
up to them on receiving 200,000/., about one-third of the 
amount which they had originally claimed. 

At the beginning of 1647 this bargain, almost equally 1G47- 
disgraceful to both the contracting parties, was completed, by 
the surrender of the captive monarch to the parliamentary 
commissioners. At first he was conveyed to Holmby Castle, 
in Northamptonshire, and the presbyterian party hoped, now 
that the war was manifestly over, to succeed in procuring 
the disbanding of the greater part of the army ; but Cromwell 
now began openly to exert his influence to disparage the par¬ 
liament. He and his friends tampered with the regiments 
destined to be sent to Ireland, so that they objected to go: 
and at last the whole army absolutely refused to lay down 
their arms, and thus asserted their entire independence of 
any superior authority. 

The king was treated with perfect respect, but rigorously 
watched. Essex, who would probably have been inclined to 
be active in his cause, had lately died, so opportunely for 
the Independents, who could not conceal their exultation at 
the event, that many accused them of having poisoned him ; 
and as the lords and the presbyterian party in the commons 
showed signs of being inclined to court a more intimate con¬ 
nexion with his majesty, Cromwell resolved by a bold 


» 






406 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. stroke to anticipate their designs. At the beginning of 

1G4 7- June a coarse ruffian, named Joyce, originally a tailor, but 
now one of Cromwell’s trusted officers, arrived at Holmby 
accompanied by a troop of horse, and compelled the king to 
accompany him into Cambridgeshire, the chief seat, as has 
been already said, of Cromwell’s influence. The indigna¬ 
tion of parliament knew no bounds. In vain did Cromwell 
call heaven and earth to witness that he was not privy to 
what had taken place ; they had ample proof of his perjury, 
but felt themselves now wholly in his power, and dared not 
proceed against him. In fact, a few days later he insti¬ 
gated the army to demand the impeachment of the chiefs of 
the presbvterian party, and, hopeless of defending them¬ 
selves, Hollis and his friends retired from parliament. 

Meantime the army had been moving from town to town, 
carrying the king along with them, till they arrived at 
Heading, and for a short time he was treated with unusual 
indulgence, being permitted to confer with his friends, and 
to see those of his children who were still in England. 
Ever sanguine, he began to hope that the army would ter¬ 
minate its disputes with the parliament by restoring him to 
his liberty and power, and his delusion was furthered by 
the language addressed by Cromwell to some of his friends, 
in which he spoke with apparent enthusiasm of the king's 
virtues, of his own appreciation of them, and prayed that God 
might measure his goodness to him by his sincerity towards 
his majesty. He did not yet dare to throw off the mask. 
The treatment by the army of the king on one side, and of 
the parliament on the other, had caused great discontent; 
great riots took place in the city, and, at "Westminster, the 
mob forced its way into the house, and insisted on a vote 
being passed in favour of Charles’s return. The officers, as 
a body, prepared fresh conditions to be submitted to his ac¬ 
ceptance, far more moderate than the last, but Charles, who 
had accurate information of what had passed, was led b> r it 
to conceive fresh hopes, and to entertain delusive opinions 
of his importance to both parties, and refused them more 
peremptorily than before; being even unwise enough to let 
Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, see the expectations which he 
cherished, and openly telling him that the army would not 
be able to do without him. Ireton had a clearer understand¬ 
ing of the real state of the case. “ Sir,” said he to the king, 
“ you desire to act as if you were the arbiter between us and 


CHARLES I. 


407 


XLI.] 

the parliament; but we mean to be the arbiters between you a.d. 
and the parliament.” In fact they were determined to be 1G4 L 
more, for Cromwell and his agents had so excited the mob 
to threaten the parliament, that a day or two afterwards, a 
large body of the members of both houses, with both their 
speakers, repaired to the army to seek its protection. Again 
did Charles’s sanguine spirit look on this event as one 
favourable to his ultimate prospects, because he heard that 
the members who remained behind had elected new r speakers ; 
that they had unanimously voted him an invitation to return 
to London ; and that the apprentices of the city, as a body, 
had declared in his favour. So unable was he to perceive, 
not however being in this respect more blind than the pres- 
byterian leaders, that affairs were no longer in a state in 
which they could be determined by a body which had neither 
weapons to wield, nor resolution to wield them if it had 
possessed them. Cromwell judged more truly when he pro¬ 
nounced that in two days the city would be in the power of 
the army ; and within the time thus predicted, the army 
entered the metropolis, bringing back the members w-ho had 
fled in triumph to their seats. 

These events greatly encouraged the Independents, and 
the republican projects, which all of them, except Crouiwnll, 
cherished, were every day more openly avowed. Cromwell 
was playing a surer game; he allowed Charles to remove to 
Hampton Court, where he surrounded him with spies, and 
where he himself and Ireton had frequent interview's with him, 
and imposed on him in a way which, to us who judge after 
the events, appears perfectly marvellous, till they actually 
persuaded him to refuse the offers which the presbyterian 
party in parliament (strengthened by the arrival of some of 
the chief noblemen from Scotland) caused to be again made 
to him. To w-hat extent Cromwell really intended at this 
time to preserve Charles any remnant of ostensible authority, 
as a puppet in his hands, can hardly be decided. He had 
of late openly avowed designs utterly subversive of the 
monarchy, and had clearly, for some time, entertained views 
of his own aggrandizement, incompatible with the preserva¬ 
tion of any real power to the king; but, though he had, be¬ 
fore Marston Moor, ostentatiously declared that he would 
as lief pistol the king as a common trooper, it is not im¬ 
probable that he had not yet become so completely callous 
to crime, but that he would have been willing to be spared 







408 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.D. the guilt of Charles’s death, if his life could have been made 

1847. consistent with his own enjoyment of power. He now 
found that this could not be. By the help ot his spies he 
intercepted a letter from Charles to his queen, in which Charles 
told her that he was courted by both factions, the Presby¬ 
terians and the army, but that he thought he should ultimately 
decide in favour of the Presbyterians. Prom this time forth 
Cromwell determined to put him to death, and pursued his 
resolution with the most remorseless and unfaltering steadi¬ 
ness. The king was now deprived of the liberty of seeing his 
trusted advisers ; his confinement was gradually made more 
strict and rigorous, till he was terrified into an attempt at 
escaping from Hampton Court, which was carefully rendered 
practicable. On the 11th of November he fled, and arrived 
in the Isle of Wight, trusting partly to the promises of 
astrologers, and partly to the fact that the uncle of colonel 
Hammond, the governor, had been one of his chaplains ; but 
he soon found that Carisbrook Castle, which was assigned 
him as a residence, was a closer prison than that which he 
had left. And now Cromwell’s language began openly to 
menace his life; nor were such threats confined to him. 

1648. On the 9th of January, 1648, Joyce, the same man who had 
carried him off from Holmbv, announced to sir John 
Berkeley that it was decided to bring Charles to trial. 
Berkeley implored his master to escape, and a vessel in the 
employ of the queen was hovering so near the island that it 
seemed possible for him to do so; but again he was en¬ 
gaged in negotiations with the Presbyterians and the Scots, 
and was again so misled by vain hopes, as to refuse the last 
means of safety offered to him. Yet he rejected the pro¬ 
posals submitted to him, and once more demanded to treat 
in person with the parliament. 

Cromwell and Ireton now threw off the mask, and led 
the parliament to declare that they would hold no further 
communication with the king; but, though his party were a 
majority in the house (I should rather say had overborne 
the majority), they were a decided minority in the country. 
Many of the counties sent up remonstrances against the 
way in which the king was treated ; plots were formed for 
his escape; the cry of “ Grod save the king ” was heard in 
the streets ; and at last the parliament itself, encouraged by 
all these signs of discontent, recovered their courage, voted 
that the form of government should not be changed, and 


CHARLES I. 


409 


XLI.] 

that fresh proposals of peace should be offered to the king, 
while the Scottish parliament determined that 40,000 men 
should be raised, to defend him and his royal authority 
against the Republicans and Independents. In AFales, too, 
the Cavaliers, being joined by many presbyterian officers, 
who had served in the parliamentary army, again raised the 
royal standard ; and the danger in that country appeared so 
pressing that Cromwell, whose desire to expel all the mo¬ 
derate members of the house by force of arms was over¬ 
ruled by Fairfax, himself quitted London at the head of 
several thousand men to check it. Other risings took place 
in different counties ; the fleet, too, declared for the king; 
the Presbyterians in parliament took courage, and recalled 
Hollis, Maynard, and the other members whom the army a 
few months before had forced them to expel. The dif¬ 
ficulties which surrounded him exasperated the generally 
humane disposition of Fairfax, and, to his lasting disgrace, 
when he took Colchester, which did not surrender till 
August, he caused sir Charles Lucas, sir George Lisle, and 
sir Bernard Gascoyne, three knights of the highest cha¬ 
racter, to be shot for defending it. 

Meanwhile the Scots, under the duke of Hamilton, had 
crossed the border with 14,000 men, and Cromwell, who had 
already put down the rising in Wales, marched northward 
with great rapidity, being joined by other troops on his 
road, and encountered them at Wigan 5 . A most stubborn 
conflict ensued ; but, in the end, the Scots were completely 
defeated. He pursued them into Scotland, where he re¬ 
established lord Argyle and the more violent party in 
power, and then hastened back to England, where events, 
very adverse to his views, had been taking place. Encou¬ 
raged by his absence, the parliament had decided on open¬ 
ing fresh negotiations with the king, and, in the middle of 
September, fifteen commissioners were sent to the Isle of 
Wight to confer with him on the restoration of peace. On 
his own side Charles managed the discussion himself with a 
degree of ability which excited both the admiration and 
astonishment of many of the commissioners: he agreed to 

5 It is said that on this occasion the name of Whig first came into use. Some of 
the most zealous of the Covenanters, encouraged by Cromwell’s presence in the 
country, rose against the Royalists; and their rising was called the rising of the 
Whigamores, from the word whigam, used by the peasants to encourage their 
horses; and from this the abbreviated name Whig was given to the party opposed 
to the court. 


AD. 

1648. 



A.D. 

1648. 


410 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

nearly all the concessions demanded of him; but still re¬ 
fused" to consent to the abolition of episcopacy, and the 
denunciation of his own chief supporters as traitors. On 
the 28th of November the commissioners quitted the Isle of 
Wight, bearing with them definitive offers from the king, 
embracing the most ample concessions on every point, 
except the two above mentioned ; and some of the presby- 
terian members of the commons made a formal motion, 
which was supported by the whole strength of their party, 
and even by some who had previously been ranked among 
the Independents, that the king’s offers were sufficient to 
ensure the safety of the kingdom. Only a week before the 
army had presented a petition demanding that the king 
should be brought to trial, and the Independents had 
moved that they should be thanked for their bold counsels, 
but had been defeated by a great majority; so that there 
seemed fair grounds for hope that, on this occasion also, 
the more moderate party would prevail; but before the 
debate, which was adjourned more than once, could be con¬ 
cluded, Cronrwell prevented the possibility of any vote 
favourable to the king being effectual, by sending a body 
of soldiers to Carisbrook, who carried him off by force to 
Hurst, a small castle on the coast of Hampshire. The 
news of this violence caused the greatest indignation in the 
parliament; I should rather say, in the house of commons, for 
the house of lords had almost ceased to sit; and a fresh motion 
was made condemning it in the strongest terms. To his great 
honour, Prynne, who in former times had suffered almost 
greater persecution than any man in England from Laud and 
the Star Chamber, now exerted all his eloquence to persuade 
the house to a defiance of the army and a reconciliation with 
the king. His arguments convinced his hearers, and the 
motion was carried by a considerable majority. The debate 
had lasted all night, and it was nine in the morning of the 
5th of December when the division took place; the last 
independent act of the parliament. When the members 
were about to reassemble the next day, they found the 
militia, which had been assigned them as a guard, removed, 
two regiments of regular cavalry and infantry occupying 
all the approaches to the house, and colonel Pride, the com¬ 
mander of one of them, with a body of troopers at the door, 
who seized all the leaders of the moderate party, and pre¬ 
vented them from entering. Upwards of forty* were thus 


CHARI.ES I. 


411 


XL1.J 

excluded ; but as that was found to be insufficient, the same a.d. 
scene was repeated the next day, till the assembly was re- 1G48 * 
duced to less than seventy members, all prepared for the 
most violent measures that could be proposed. A fanatical 
preacher, named Hugh Peters, addressed a blasphemous 
sermon to the scanty remnant thus left; and then Cromwell 
made a short speech in his usual manner, calling God to 
witness that he had been in no respect privy to what had 
been done, though he rejoiced at it, and thought it well 
done. 

The end was approaching; his will was now irresistible; 
and he had determined to proceed without delay in the 
course which he had marked out for himself. To show his 
pretensions the more unmistakably, he took possession of 
the king’s apartments at Whitehall, and a day or two after¬ 
wards, on the 17th of December, the king was removed 
from Hurst on his way to Windsor. He arrived there on 
the 23rd, and the same day the commons voted that he 
should be brought to trial, and appointed a committee to 
draw up the accusation against him ; but when they sent 
the bill up to the peers, that body, in a fuller house than had 1649. 
of late been usual (twelve of its members being assembled 
to debate on the fate of their sovereign), rejected it unani¬ 
mously. The commons, therefore, were forced to proceed 
on their own vote alone; and having passed a resolution 
that they, as the representatives of the people of England, 
possessed sovereign power, proceeded to arrange the pre¬ 
parations for the trial. The entire number of members who 
thus arrogated to themselves the whole government of the 
kingdom, and a right which had never been claimed before 
by the very wildest democrats, was only fifty-three; and 
though the commissioners, whom they named to sit as 
judges, amounted to 135, scarcely half of that number ever 
sat. 

The 20th of January was the day appointed for the trial 
to commence in Westminster Hall; but, as if to mark that 
it was a mere form, and that the king’s destruction was 
unalterably determined, on the 17th persons were sent to 
take an inventory of all the property in the royal palaces, 
which were pronounced to be from that time forth the pro¬ 
perty of the parliament. 

On the 19th Charles was brought to London, and lodged 
in St. James’s Palace, closely guarded; and the next day he 


412 


HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. was conducted between two ranks of soldiers to Westmin- 

1640. g |- er lawyer of the name of Bradshaw, a man of no 

eminent reputation, though considered a skilful lawyer, had 
been appointed president of the court; and a barrister, 
named Coke, had been selected, as the attorney-general of 
the house, to conduct the prosecution. 

Charles behaved with kingly dignity; and, justly denying 
the authority of the court, and the legality of the house ol 
commons arrogating to themselves alone the title of the 
parliament, while the peers refused to agree to their mea¬ 
sures, he refused to plead. Three days was this scene re¬ 
peated, while the impression made by the king’s firmness 
was so great and so general that the number of his judges 
daily decreased, and the sympathy of the mob, and even of 
the soldiers, became daily greater. Each day, as he retired, 
the populace had raised the cry of “ God save the king.” At 
last even a soldier ventured to express a similar prayer, and 
was severely beaten by his officer. Then for the first time 
Charles remonstrated. “ Sir,” said he to the officer, “ the 
punishment, methinks, exceeds the offence.” In many quarters 
strong efforts were made to save him. The prince of Wales 
wrote to Fairfax, offering to concede every thing which had 
ever been demanded of his father; an embassy from Holland 
arrived to remonstrate ; while the Scottish commissioners 
made an official protest, in the name of their entire king¬ 
dom, against the proceedings of the court. At last, on the 
25th, the court pronounced the king guilty of high treason, 
in having waged war against the parliament; and on the 
27th he was brought before them to receive his sentence. 

Ou that day the sitting, as usual, began by calling over 
the names of the members. When that of Fairfax was 
called, and he did not reply, a female voice exclaimed loudly, 
“ He has more wit than to be here.” Presently, when 
Bradshaw, rising to address the king, declared himself to be 
speaking on behalf of the people of England, the same voice 
cried out, “ Of not the hundredth part of them.” The offi¬ 
cers bade the soldiers fire into the seat from whence such 
audacious words had proceeded; but it was found that lady 
Fairfax was the speaker. The king now demanded a con¬ 
ference in the painted chamber with both houses of parlia¬ 
ment, and some of the judges were inclined to grant his 
demand, had they not been borne down by the violence and 
threats of Cromwell. While his demand was being discussed 


CHARLES I. 


413 


XLI.] 

Charles was exposed to all the insults of the soldiers, who a.d. 
were excited to offer them by the most brutal of their offi- 1C4!J - 
cers. Some smoked in his face ; others reviled him; one 
even spit upon him. He bore all these insults with a meek 
dignity, which scarcely permitted even his contempt for them 
to be seen; and when, after sentence of death had been pro¬ 
nounced upon him, and while he was being conducted back to 
St. James’s, the soldiers insulted him with loud cries of 
“ Justice,” “Execution,” the only remark that they extorted 
from him was, that for a shilling they would raise the same 
cry against their own officers. 

He now refused to see any one except those of his chil¬ 
dren, the duke of Gloucester and the princess Elizabeth, who 
were still in England, and Juxon, bishop of London, who 
administered to him the consolations of religion. On the 
29th the judges met for the last time to fix the next day for 
his death. At that last moment some recoiled with remorse 
from the horrid deed which they had hitherto sanctioned, 
and could scarcely be retained by force in the room w r here 
the death-warrant lay to be signed. Those who did sign it 
were for the most part so agitated that their signatures were 
scarcely legible. Cromwell alone endeavoured, by a gaiety 
strangely at variance with his usual demeanour, to conceal 
the disquietude which troubled even his own callous breast 
at the thoughts of the irrevocable deed of guilt which he was 
committing and forcing others to commit. He dragged one 
man to the table, and compelled him to sign by guiding his 
hand, spirted the ink into the face of another, joked and 
laughed with forced and unnatural mirth, 

“ And for brief time of all the crowd, 

As he was loudest of the loud. 

Seemed gayest of the gay 6 .” 

On the 30th of January Charles rose early in the morn¬ 
ing. He had slept tranquilly, and he now dressed himself 
with care, putting on rather more clothes than usual, lest, 
if he should tremble, as the weather was cold, his enemies 
should impute his tremor to fear. Juxon soon arrived, and 
began to pray with him. As he began to read the chapter 
of St. Matthew which records the death of our Saviour, the 
king asked him whether he had selected it as especially 
applicable to his own situation, and was greatly affected at 


6 Lord of the Isles, ii. 2. 



414 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. being told it was the regular lesson appointed for the day. 

1649 . At ten the guards came to conduct him to Whitehall. 
There he received the communion from Juxon, though some 
ministers of the Independents tried to disturb his last 
moments with their intrusion. At one o’clock he was con¬ 
ducted to the scaffold, erected in front of the palace at 
Whitehall. He had intended to address a short speech to 
the people, but Cromwell had so surrounded him with sol¬ 
diers that he could not be heard; so he contented himself 
with a few words to Juxon and Tomlinson, the captain of 
the guard, justifying himself from the charge of having: been 
the cause of the late troubles, and bidding the bishop deliver 
his dying blessing to his wife and children ; then, having 
laid his head upon the block, he said a short prayer, gave the 
fatal signal, and was beheaded at one blow by an executioner 
carefully disguised and masked. He, raising the bleeding 
head, proclaimed it to be the head of a traitor; but the mul¬ 
titude broke through the files of soldiers to dip their hand¬ 
kerchiefs in his blood, and to preserve them as memorials of 
one whose unparalleled injuries had effaced from their minds 
all recollection of his early misgovernment. 

It is needless to dilate on the foulness of this atrocious 
and unprecedented crime, which all ages and all parties have 
condemned. It is sufficient to point out that it was in no 
sense the act of the nation, but of a small section of the 
Independents, instigated and supported by an almost equally 
small portion of the army. It may, indeed, be stated to 
have been wholly the act of Cromwell. He it was who 
declared some time before that he would cut off Charles’s 
head with the crown upon it; he it was who intimidated the 
court into pronouncing sentence, and afterwards into sign¬ 
ing the death-warrant; and, perhaps, in spite of all that had 
previously taken place, no influence short of that possessed 
by his powerful will could have been sufficient to do so. 

Of the character of Charles we have already spoken. He 
had many eminent virtues, and was not without considerable 
talents. He had also some great faults, and very grievous 
errors had been instilled into his mind by a most foolish and 
unprincipled father. As a private individual he would have 
been amiable and estimable, for he was humane, affectionate, 
and religious, while even one of his greatest faults, the 
proneness to be led by the advice of others, even when in¬ 
ferior to himself in capacity, is to some extent an attractive 


CHARLES I. 


415 


XLI.] 

quality, at least in the eyes of those whose counsels are 
taken. But he cannot be said to have been a prudent, or a 
good, or a gracious king: not a good king, for he designed 
to make himself, what, indeed, he had been told from his 
youth that he had a right to be, an absolute sovereign ; nor 
a prudent or gracious one, for when forced, bit by bit, to 
abandon his pretensions, he did it always with such reluc¬ 
tance, that his concessions lost all their merit in the eyes of 
his subjects, as being manifestly yielded only to their superior 
power. Whether, if he had been a prince of a different 
character, he would have avoided the misfortunes which have 
made his the most remarkable reign in our history, it may 
be difficult to decide. The concessions which, though un¬ 
willingly and ungraciously, he did make, afforded ample 
security for the rights and liberties of the people in future: 
yet they were wholly unable to avert civil war; and, from the 
moment that the war commenced, the Republicans, a party at 
first probably limited to four or five enthusiasts, became 
gradually stronger, and more open in the assertion of their 
principles, some of them even avowing their designs against 
his life almost three years before his execution. Nor is it 
easy to decide when Cromwell first began to entertain the 
views which clearly actuated him during the last year of the 
reign. At first his object appears to have been the acquisi¬ 
tion of rank and wealth, united, probably, with important 
military command ; and we may, perhaps, believe that it was 
the progress of events, his gradual perception of his own 
pre-eminence of talents and energy, and of the superior 
power of his party, though this was greatly owing to himself, 
which by degrees enlarged his ambition, and led him to 
cherish projects of greater aggrandizement than at first 
could have seemed attainable 7 . If this judgment be cor¬ 
rect, though talents such as Stratford’s might have saved 
Charles, no degree or description of virtue could have had 
the same effect. Indeed, as it was, no act of his life can 
possibly be alleged which affords the very slightest plea for 
the sentence which, with the most impudent mockery of the 
forms of law ever perpetrated, was executed upon him. He 
certainly desired the possession of arbitrary power; but in 

7 In the conditions agreed to by the house of commons, in December, 1645, 
as those on which peace might be made, it was stipulated that Cromwell was 
to be made a peer with an estate of 2500/. a year, a very considerable sum in 
those days. 


A.D. 

1049. 



416 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. practice his was the most humane government that at that 

1049. time had ever been witnessed in Europe. Men were no 
longer put to death for their religious opinions. The use of 
torture, a favourite resource of Elizabeth, whom the Puritans 
professed to hold in especial reverence, was abolished as 
illegal; even the taxes imposed by his own authority, though 
illegal, as being so imposed, were moderate in amount; and 
though the Star Chamber inflicted what would now be looked 
upon as atrocious punishments for slight offences, those 
punishments were not then considered unusually severe ; at 
all events they were less cruel than those of the two last 
reigns. Scandalous as was the practice, in accordance with 
which Prynne and others lost their ears, even such mutila¬ 
tion was less cruel than that inflicted on Stubbs by queen 
Elizabeth for an offence even slighter than that of Prynne 
and his fellow-martyrs. And the charge that Charles had 
levied war upon the parliament was false ; not only did 
Hotham, with the sanction of that assembly, close the gates 
of Hull against the king long before he raised his standard 
at Nottingham, but the two houses, by their own ordinance, 
called out the militia of the different counties many weeks 
before he began to levy any forces whatever for his separate 
service. He came of a long line of princes, not generally 
devoid of ability or of virtue, but most especially distin¬ 
guished for the almost uninterrupted train of misfortunes 
that accompanied them—misfortunes that were not ended 
even with his life. It is as sad as it is singular that his 
father, the worst of the race, was the most prosperous; he 
himself, the most able and the most virtuous, was of all the 
most unfortunate. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


THE COMMONWEALTH. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Ferdinand III, 
Leopold . . . 1058 


France. 
Louis XIV. 

Spain. 
Philip IV. 


Popes. A.D. 
Innocent X. 

Alexander VII. 1655 


1C49. The death of the king did not of itself involve the destruc¬ 
tion of the kingly power, and for a day or two some persons 
entertained the idea of proclaiming a new sovereign ; but on 






XLII.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 417 

the 7th of February, monarchy was abolished by a formal 
vote of the parliament; the house of lords was extinguished 
at the same time, though the dignity of the peerage was 
preserved; and an executive council of forty-one members, 
among whom of course was Cromwell, was appointed to con¬ 
duct the business of the state. It soon appeared that these 
and the preceding measures of the last month were viewed 
with great general dissatisfaction. When the lord mayor 
was ordered to proclaim the new government in the city, he 
refused to obey ; and of the executive council itself, though 
counting fourteen regicides among its members, only nine¬ 
teen could by any means be brought to sign a declaration 
that they approved of the execution of the king, and of the 
abolition of the monarchy. 

In the country the discontent was even more general. 
An oath of fidelity to the commonwealth, which was required 
of all the beneficed clergy, public functionaries, and members 
of the universities, was refused by thousands, and it was 
scarcely possible by any means to enforce the destruction of 
the emblems of royalty scattered throughout all the parishes 
of the country. The dominant party w r as exasperated by these 
events, and endeavoured to strike terror into its opponents 
by bringing some of the most eminent prisoners to trial for 
adhering to the king. The duke of Hamilton, lord Holland, 
and lord Capel were executed for this offence; and their 
deaths, especially that of Capel, greatly increased the general 
indignation; as Cromwell avowed that his reason for insist¬ 
ing on his execution was the eminence of his abilities and 
virtues, and the greatness of his consequent influence. Lord 
Norwich was included in the same accusation and condem¬ 
nation, as was sir John Owen, who had long maintained the 
royal cause in Wales, after it had been despaired of in other 
districts. But lord Norwich was saved by the interest of 
his friends; and sir John, who, when sentence was pro¬ 
nounced upon him, had bowed his acknowledgments to the 
court, for, as he said, doing him, a plain Welsh country 
gentleman, the honour to behead him in such noble company, 
was rescued by the interposition of colonel Hutchinson, one 
of the king’s judges, but virtuous and humane, though mis¬ 
led by fanaticism, who thought it hard that while so much 
interest was made to save the condemned lords, no one 
would speak a word for the commoner. 

While these feelings of discontent were thus rife, they 

e e 


A.D. 

1649. 



A.D. 

1649. 


418 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

were on a sudden greatly inflamed by the publication of a book 
bearing the title of ‘‘Icon Basilike 8 ,’’ professing to be the 
composition of the late king, during his imprisonment, but 
subsequently ascertained to be the work of a Dr. Grauden, who 
received the reward of a bishopric from Charles II. It pur¬ 
ported to be a faithful transcript of Charles’s feelings, and 
hopes, and disappointments, and sorrows, during the last 
years of his life; and, being believed to be genuine, was 
sought with such avidity by all classes, that in spite of the 
zeialous efforts of the government to suppress it, nearly 
50,000 copies were sold in a single year. It was translated 
into French and other of the continental languages; and 
every where produced so great an impression on its readers, 
that the executive council employed their secretary, a cousin 
of Bradshaw’s, John Milton, (to whose name his poems have 
given a better merited immortality,) to write a reply to it. 
It was the beginning of a paper war which lasted for some 
time. Milton’s pamphlet, which he called“Iconoclastes 9 ,” was 
a production so lame as to provoke a rejoinder, on which 
Charles II. employed the pen of Salmasius, a professor at 
Leyden. Milton again replied to Salmasius, and Salmasius 
to Milton ; till both sides found out that the contest between 
them was one which could only be decided by more effective 
weapons. 

In some counties the discontent showed itself in actual 
insurrection ; and in London, several of the regiments which 
had been selected to serve in Ireland refused to go, and 
broke out into open mutiny; one of the mutineers was shot, 
and his comrades and a large body of the citizens celebrated 
his funeral with a pomp that was easily perceived to be 
meant mainly as an insult to the parliament, which, in 
revenge, passed a set of very stringent laws against the 
press; and against all the Loyalists and Roman Catholics, 
whom it banished from London; and so jealous did it show 
itself of all opposition that even the services rendered by sir 
W. Waller in the civil war could not save him from its 
suspicions, and he was long detained in a sort of honourable 
confinement at Windsor. 

While affairs were in this disturbed state in England, 
they were still worse in Ireland. Towards the end of the 
king’s reign the pope had sent over a nuncio, named 

8 From two Gi'eek words, tlKwu ftaaiXim), the image of a king. 

9 From two Greek words, tiKU)v and /cAdew, to break. 


xlii.] the commonwealth. 419 

Binuccini, whose rashness and violence had thrown the 
whole island into confusion; and the marquis of Ormond, 
the lord-lieutenant, unable to make head against the rebels, 
had retired to France; but, after a time, the Boman Catho¬ 
lics themselves becoming disgusted with Binuccini, expelled 
him; and so large a party of both religions invited Ormond 
to return that he did so, and exerted all his energies in the 
support of the royal cause, collecting a considerable army, 
and taking some important towns from the parliamentary 
generals. The progress which he made was so considerable, 
that Cromwell decided on going himself to arrest it; and, in 
August, crossed the Irish Channel at the head of a force 
fully equal to that under Ormond. Events favoured him as 
usual; before he landed colonel Jones with 4000 men had 
surprised Ormond at Bathmines, near Dublin, and defeated 
him with great loss; and Cromwell had little to do beyond 
reaping the fruits of his victory. He advanced at once into 
the heart of the country; stormed Drogheda, then called 
Tredagh; he afterwards attacked Wexford, which capitulated; 
and almost every town of any importance followed its 
example. He sullied his triumph with an inhumanity of 
which no other wars that had ever devastated these islands 
afforded any example: the garrison of Drogheda amounted 
to 3000 men; many fell in the assault, all the rest were 
butchered in cold blood by his express orders; and numbers 
of the citizens with their wives and children shared the 
same fate, in which the fury of his soldiers involved even 
many of the supporters of the parliament. At Wexford he 
repeated the massacre; at Growran the common soldiers 
were spared, but every officer was murdered; at Boss he 
even hung the bishop in his pontifical robes in revenge for 
the resistance made by the garrison of the castle; and he 
reported these indiscriminate slaughters to the parliament 
in a despatch, the coolness of which is, if possible, more 
hideous than his cruelty. In the fanatical language so 
fashionable among his party, he spoke of these outrages on 
humanity as the righteous chastisements of Grod. His 
apologists since have assured us that he was not one who 
delighted in bloodshed, but that he looked upon success, at 
whatever price it might be purchased, as indispensable to 
his cause, and above all to the aggrandizement of his own 
fortune; and that, therefore, in the grandeur of his ambi¬ 
tious selfishness, he was willing to gratify the passions of 

e e 2 


A.D. 

1049. 


420 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[cH. 

a.d. those who could contribute to that aggrandizement. If this 

1649. p e a justification, it is hard to see what crime has ever been 
committed which may not be justified by a similar plea; but 
the truth is, that such atrocities are always as impolitic as 
they are flagitious ; and these massacres have not only trans¬ 
mitted his memory to posterity loaded with everlasting 
infamy, but at the time they created a wide-spread abhor¬ 
rence of him, which not only is still preserved in the tradi¬ 
tions of the lower orders of the Irish, who recognize no 
more bitter imprecation on the head of their deadliest enemy 
than the curse of Cromwell, but which gave rise to many 
of the plots and conspiracies by which his whole life was 
disquieted. 

1650. Had it not been for his success in Ireland, Charles, who 
w r as at this time in Jersey, would probably have crossed 
over to that island to put himself at the head of Ormond’s 
army; but these disasters put an end to that design, and, 
as the Scots offered to acknowledge him for their king on 
the condition of his subscribing the covenant, after much 
deliberation he determined on repairing to that kingdom. 
Nor was he diverted from his purpose by the misfortunes of 
Montrose, who, in the mean time, having received from him 
a renewal of his commission as captain-general of Scotland, 
had landed in Caithness with a small army, but was over¬ 
powered by a superior force, under general Leslie, which 
the Scottish parliament sent against him; his troops were 
routed, and he himself, vainly endeavouring to escape in 
disguise, was betrayed to his enemies. The earl of Argyle, 
the hereditary enemy of his family, was eager to revenge on 
his prisoner the disgrace which he himself had sustained at 
Inverlochy, and easily prevailed on the parliament, composed 
of course wholly of Presbyterians, to bring him to trial for 
apostasy from the covenant and for rebellion. It was easy 
to procure the conviction and condemnation of one who 
gloried in the exploits charged against him as crimes; and 
on the 21st of May he was hanged at Edinburgh, a book 
containing a record of his victories being fastened round his 
neck, which, as he told the executioner, he looked upon as a 
testimony in his honour, of which he was prouder than he 
had ever been of the collar of the garter: while, as according 
to the terms of his sentence, his head, and legs, and arms 
were to be stuck over the gates of the five principal cities in 
the kingdom, he expressed a wish that he had limbs enough 


XLII.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 421 

to be sent to every city in Christendom, as a memorial of 
the righteous cause for which he was doomed and willing to 
suffer. Charles arrived in Scotland in June, 1650; but, 
instead of enjoying the power which he had anticipated, he 
found himself treated with great disrespect, being constantly 
exposed to long harangues on the impurity of his faith as a 
member of an episcopal church, and to still more irksome 
lectures on the greater impurities of his conduct; and at 
last, as he began to doubt even of his personal safety if he 
ventured to assert his own independence, he not only pro¬ 
claimed his adherence to the covenant, but declared his 
belief also that the calamities which had befallen his family 
were just judgments from Heaven for the idolatry of his 
mother, and the sin of his father in tolerating that idolatry, 
and in becoming a shedder of innocent blood. 

A career that began thus shamefully could hardly be 
expected to proceed honourably, and did not deserve to end 
happily; but his conduct so far propitiated the leaders of 
the Scottish parliament, that they assembled an army, 
under Leslie, to fight in.his defence against Cromwell, who, 
having been appointed captain-general of England, on 
Fairfax’s resignation of that command, was now preparing 
to invade Scotland. Leslie had 16,000 men, and being a 
skilful and prudent general, had occupied a strong position 
near Dunbar, which defied Cromwell’s efforts to bring him 
to action; and want of provisions and supplies of all kinds 
was reducing Cromwell to such distress, that he was on 
the point of commencing an inglorious and disastrous re¬ 
treat, when the Scottish clergy, having, as they declared, 
received a revelation from the Lord that He had delivered 
Agag into their hands, compelled their general to quit his 
vantage-ground, and descend into the plain to engage 
Cromwell. Cromwell’s troops were only half the number 
of their enemies, but he attacked them while in disorder, 
routed them completely, and took possession of Edinburgh 
as the fruit of his victory. 

So great were the divisions in Scotland, that Charles 
looked on this event as fortunate for himself. Even after 
the abolition of episcopacy, religious differences still divided 
the whole nation into hostile parties, and he had found 
himself little better than a prisoner in the hands of the 
more violent fanatics, who imputed the defeat at Dunbar 
to their omission hitherto to purge the court and the army 


A.D. 

1650. 





422 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. of the profane, as they called all who differed from them- 

1650. selves, and who now proceeded to obviate the recurrence 
of a similar disaster by compelling Charles to discard all 
his personal friends and supporters. He attempted to 
escape from their hands; they discovered his retreat, and 
brought him back to Perth by force; but this open display 
of his resentment at their treatment of him alarmed them, 
and for the future they behaved to him with more deference, 
and for a while reconciled themselves with the Presbyterians ; 
Argyle himself, the leader of the violent party, being pro¬ 
pitiated by overtures made to him by Charles, who pro¬ 
fessed a willingness to marry his daughter; and, on the 

1651. 1st of January, 1651, Charles was crowned king at Scone, 
with the approbation, or at least the consent, of both 
factions. 

Cromwell applied himself with great address, and not 
without success, to revive their dissensions; but the mode¬ 
rate party preserved the advantage which they had obtained, 
and the king’s authority became in consequence more real. 
The Scotch parliament besought him to take the command 
of the army himself, an invitation which was very agreeable 
to him, as enabling him to fulfil a design, which he had for 
some time meditated, of invading England. The present 
seemed a favourable opportunity for the execution of such 
a plan; for Cromwell had been attacked by a violent fever, 
which caused great anxiety to his English partisans, and 
rendered it probable that he would not be able to continue 
at the head of the army; but he recovered in a few weeks, 
and the divisions in the Scottish councils, where the march 
to the south was greatly disapproved, delayed the starting 
of the expedition till the end of July, when Charles crossed 
the border, at the head of 12,000 or 14,000 men, with 
Leslie under him as his lieutenant-general. 

Cromwell himself viewed this operation without concern, 
thinking that he should find it much easier to terminate 
the war at a blow in England than in Scotland; but in 
London it caused great and universal consternation, and a 
belief on the part of many people that it was the result of 
a secret understanding between him and the king. Charles, 
on his arrival at Carlisle, issued a proclamation, offering a 
general amnesty to the whole kingdom, with the sole 
exceptions of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Cook, to which the 
parliament replied by ordering it to be burnt by the common 


XL11.1 


THE COMMONWEALTH. 


423 


hangman, and by proclaiming him and his adherents guilty a.d. 
of high treason. Charles descended rapidly into the heart 
of the kingdom, and in three weeks reached Worcester, 
which he immediately occupied, intending to halt there, so 
as to give his adherents time to join him; but he had 
been greatly disappointed by the general indifference of the 
country to his cause, and by the very scanty reinforcements 
which joined him in his march. Apprehension of the power 
of the parliament deterred many of his well-wishers from 
making any open exertion in his favour; the vigorous 
measures and well-concerted operations of Cromwell ren¬ 
dered abortive the hasty enterprises of others; while others 
were disgusted, or repelled by the senseless fanaticism of 
the Scotch clergy, who still followed the army, and who, 
finding that Massy, a general formerly distinguished in the 
service of the parliament, but now a zealous officer of the 
young king, was rallying men of all persuasions in the 
counties of Lancashire and Cheshire around the royal 
standard, apprehended another judgment of God, like that 
which they had experienced at Dunbar, if they allowed 
Papists and Episcopalians to unite with them, and required 
him to publish a declaration that he would accept of the 
services of no one who hesitated to take an oath of fidelity 
to the covenant. 

Within a week from the day on which Charles reached 
Worcester Cromwell overtook him there, with an army 
nearly trebling the royal force in numbers, and still more 
superior in equipments, in experience, in the skill of their 
general, and in the confidence derived from a continued 
series of success. He determined to storm the city. On 
the evening of the 2nd of September he crossed the Severn 
with a strong division; and at daybreak on the 3rd, the 
anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, he began to batter 
the walls with his artillery. Charles sallied forth, at the 
head of nearly all his army, to attack his camp on the 
left bank of the river, which he expected to find weakly 
defended; but Cromwell, perceiving his design, returned 
with speed, and took the command in person. A desperate 
conflict, as severe, according to Cromwell’s own words, as 
any that he had ever witnessed, took place, and lasted for 
several hours. Charles displayed the most brilliant courage; 
but at the most important crisis of the battle, Leslie, though 
commanded by him to charge with his cavalry, remained 



424 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

ad. immovable. “Ob, for one hour of Montrose!” cried an 

lt>51. English Cavalier, who saw with dismay a most favourable 
opportunity wantonly thrown away; but no Montrose was 
there; and 3000 Scottish horsemen, apparently the flower 
of the army, saw the battle lost without striking one blow 
to save it. At last the royal regiments which did fight 
exhausted their ammunition. Cromwell, by a desperate 
charge, threw them into disorder, and drove them back 
into the city in such confusion, that the king was forced 
to dismount and seek an entrance on foot as his only 
means of escaping capture. A small troop of fifty or sixty 
gentlemen formed themselves into a body-guard for the 
defeated prince, with whom he passed through Worcester, 
and took the road to the north; but he was hotly pursued, 
and it was thought necessary that he should separate from 
this devoted band, and seek his safety alone. No hope 
remained for him in the island; but the coast was so care¬ 
fully watched in every part, that it was difficult to quit it. 
For six weeks he wandered over his kingdom, encounter¬ 
ing every kind of danger, and avoiding them by the most 
romantic adventures; sometimes disguised as a woodman, 
as a groom, or as a woman; hiding in trees, and cellars, 
and in the secret recesses constructed in times of religious 
persecution for the shelter of fugitive priests; till at last 
be found a vessel, the captain of which undertook to convey 
him safely across the Channel, and in which he embarked 
at Shoreham, and landed in Normandy, after upwards of 
forty persons had been privy to his concealment, not one 
of whom, though they were mostly of low rank, and in 
needy circumstances, and though the parliament offered a 
large reward for his capture, dreamt for a single moment of 
betraying him. 

The parliament showered vast rewards upon Cromwell, 
assigning him Hampton Court for his residence, with a 
pension of 4000/. a year, and distributing proportionate 
rewards among his officers; but, though he himself, in the 
canting language which he so much affected, called the 
victory a crowning mercy which eminently deserved the 
gratitude of parliament towards that Supreme Being, who 
thus had manifested his approbation of their new form of 
government, he did not display his own thankfulness by 
making a merciful use of his success, but put lord Derby 
and the noblest of his prisoners to death, and sold thou- 


XLTI.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 425 

sands of the common soldiers to be carried from their native a.u. 
land, and worked as slaves in the plantations of the West 1651 * 
Indies, or the mines of Africa. 

On all public occasions Cromwell behaved with an osten¬ 
tatious modesty, but in his general conduct he could not 
help displaying the elation of his soul to such a degree, that 
Hugh Peters predicted that he was intending to make him¬ 
self king. And he very soon began to sound those whose aid 
was indispensable to such a design, but was disappointed to 
find that, though most of them thought a return to monarchy 
desirable, not one of them suggested that he should be the 
monarch, but looked rather to the duke of Gloucester, the 
youngest son of the late king, as less pledged than his elder 
brothers to enmity to all the members and measures of the 
parliament; so he laid the design aside for a time, and oc¬ 
cupied himself with foreign politics, in which he earned a far 
nobler reputation than was merited by his conduct in 
domestic affairs, either as a subject or as a ruler. 

The attitude which the commonwealth, under his guidance, 1G52. 
assumed towards foreign nations was one of conscious 
strength and real dignity. Its chiefs announced their in¬ 
tention of maintaining all existing treaties with other states, 
and of preserving peace to the utmost of their power; and, 
beyond this avowal, they did not choose to make any advance 
in the way of courting alliances, lest such a proceeding should 
look like a consciousness of needing support. The execu¬ 
tion of the king had produced a profound impression in every 
country in Europe, as an enormity not only unprecedented, 
but never before contemplated even in the wildest rebellion; 
still there was so much resolution, so great an appearance 
of power in the act, that they feared to break with the rulers 
who had done it, and yet were ashamed at first to sanction 
it by acknowledging them. Eor a while they hesitated. 

Spain was the first to take a decided line and to accredit its 
ambassador to the infant commonwealth. Prance was un¬ 
able to decide with equal promptness. Its own government 
was weak, the whole country was torn asunder by faction, 
and, besides that, the court was especially bound to the 
English Loyalists by the near relationship of queen Hen¬ 
rietta to Louis XIY. She and her son found an asylum at 
Paris, and received a pension from the king, but the 
sympathy of cardinal Mazarin, the minister, went no further, 
nor would he hold out to Charles any expectation of assist- 



426 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. ance towards the recovery of his hereditary rights, nor did 

1052. he even afford him any positive recognition of them. Even 
the shelter that was afforded to the fugitive princess gave 
umbrage to the rulers of the commonwealth ; some rough 
passages took place between the two governments, and it w T as 
very generally expected on the Continent that Cromwell was 
about to invade Erance. At last, when the death of the 
prince of Orange disappointed the scheme which Mazarin 
had formed, of uniting with Holland against Spain and Eng¬ 
land, the cardinal, after balancing long between what he 
considered the dictates of honour and of prudence, began to 
see the desirableness of acknowledging the commonwealth. 
In a most characteristic memorial on the subject which he 
addressed to the queen regent, for Louis XIV. was, as yet, 
only a boy, he urges that though nothing could be more in¬ 
jurious to the king’s reputation than his abandonment of 
his cousin Charles ; and though nothing could be more ini¬ 
quitous than his recognition of usurpers whose hands were 
stained with the blood of their sovereign; yet, as honour 
and justice ought never to dictate any thing imprudent, it 
might be desirable to recognize them ; still cherishing a 
secret hope that, at a future time, a more honourable line of 
conduct might be practicable; yet, as it would be the most 
injurious of all things to the king’s fame to commit a base 
action without getting any good by it, he recommends the 
sending an agent to England to ascertain that his advances 
will not be received with indifference. At first his agent 
failed, partly perhaps because Cromwell was, at the same 
time, by means of secret agents, intriguing with De Eetz 
and the leaders of the Eronde ; but at last all difficulties 
were removed, Louis wrote a letter to Cromwell with his 
own hand, and in December official relations were re¬ 
established between the two countries. 

With Holland war at first appeared inevitable. The 
stadtholder, the prince of Orange, was married to a daughter 
of Charles I., and did not disguise his indignation at his 
execution. Eupert, as admiral of the young king’s fleet, 
fitted out ships in the Dutch ports, with which he carried 
on a piratical sort of warfare in the Channel, taking and 
pillaging the British merchantmen, till, in the spring of 
1650, the parliament provided a powerful squadron to protect 
the coast, giving the command to Blake and other officers, 
as yet only known as brave soldiers, but who soon acquired 


THE COMMONWEALTH. 


427 


XLII.] 

considerable maritime experience, and earned an undying a.d. 
naval reputation. Blake chased Rupert from the Channel 1652 * 
to Portugal, blockaded him in the mouth of the Tagus, 
from thence he drove him to Malaga, and from the Mediter¬ 
ranean to the western coast of Africa; and returned in 
triumph, claiming the honour of having established the 
maritime supremacy of England. But in December, 1050, 
the stadtholder died, after a few days’ illness, and, as it was 
believed that those who succeeded to the government enter¬ 
tained very different views, the leaders of the commonwealth 
sent an embassy to the Hague, with St. John at its head, in 
the hope of cementing an alliance with a people whose con¬ 
stitution was so similar to that which they had themselves 
established. Some of the more visionary of their body even 
entertained the impracticable idea of uniting the two nations 
into one republic; but the Dutch populace shared the feel¬ 
ings of their deceased prince, and insulted the ambassadors. 

St. John returned to England, indignant at the treatment 
which he had received, and which he endeavoured to excite 
Cromwell to avenge by war. Cromwell was contented with 
a more pacific hostility; with strong remonstrances, with 
the Act of Navigation, which was rapidly passed through 
parliament, and which, though apparently restricting equally 
the right of all nations to import the produce of other 
countries into England, was, in fact, aimed chiefly at, and 
was chiefly injurious to the Dutch, whose wealth was de¬ 
rived, in a great degree, from that kind of traffic. 

The victory of Worcester, however, produced the same effect 
upon the Dutch as upon the Erench, and made them also 
decide on courting the alliance of a government which now 
seemed to be completely established; but the English rulers, 
though secretly pleased, displayed such arrogance towards 
their ambassadors, who in their turn were insulted by the 
London mobs, as held out but little hopes of any cordial 
union between the countries, mutually jealous of each other’s 
maritime pretensions; and while affairs were in this feverish 
state, an accidental encounter between Blake and the Dutch 
admiral, Van Tromp, put an end to all prospects of peace, 
and both nations made great exertions to carry on the 
war with vigour. One hundred and five ships were soon 
placed under the command of Blake, who, sailing towards 
the Orkneys to attack the Dutch engaged in the her¬ 
ring fishery, was pursued by Van Tromp with 120 ves- 



428 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.D. sels; but the battle for which both fleets were anxious 

ltif)2. was prevented by a terrible storm, in which the Dutch were 
the greatest sufferers. Tromp returned home and resigned 
his command ; De Ruyter, who succeeded him, was defeated, 
and Tromp resumed his previous station. So great were 
the expectations formed on his reappointment, that Charles 
himself desired earnestly to be allowed to serve as a volun¬ 
teer on board his flag-ship, but this offer was refused. 
Tromp compelled Blake to retire into the Thames, and then 
sailed up and down the Channel with a broom at his main¬ 
mast, in token that he had swept the sea of his enemies; 
but, a couple of months afterwards, Blake, having received 
sufficient reinforcements, again put to sea, met the Dutch 
fleet off the isle of Portland, and in a conflict, which lasted 
three days, gave it a severe defeat. 

But these efforts, though successful aud glorious, were 
very costly. The parliament became distressed for funds to 
support them, and had recourse to the most atrocious con¬ 
fiscations of the estates belonging to those who had sided 
with the late king, or who were supposed to favour the pre¬ 
tensions of his son; and determined also to put up all the 
royal parks for sale. The money thus raised was to be ap¬ 
plied to the maintenance of the fleet, a force of which they 
had no jealousy ; at the same time they began to diminish 
the army, a measure to which Cromwell felt unable to object, 
though he saw plainly that it was intended as a blow at his 
own power. In fact, the hostility between him and the 
parliament was no longer concealed; he attempted to pro¬ 
cure its immediate dissolution, but was baffled, and that 
event was at last fixed for the winter of the year 1654 ; still, 
when fixed, he did not cease from his endeavours to anticipate 
it, nor they from theirs to postpone it. 

Religious animosities were at the bottom of their enmity. 
The parliament had established Presbyterianism as the na¬ 
tional religion. Cromwell’s party, composed of Independents, 
Pifth Monarchy-men, and other fanatics, began to revile the 
Presbyterians; affirming, and indeed with truth, that they 
were as bigoted as Episcopalians or Roman Catholics. At 
last he instigated the army to address a violent remonstrance 
and petition to the parliament; and, thinking that this dis¬ 
play of his strength had diminished the danger of opposition, 
lie again discussed with some of the leading men his project 
of assuming the throne. Whitelocke advised him to make a 







THE COMMONWEALTH. 


429 


XLII.] 

treaty with Charles. Calamy, a presbyterian minister of a.d. 
great influence in the city, told him openly that nine out of iar,2> 
ten men throughout the kingdom would oppose him. Crom¬ 
well’s reply evinced no disinclination for, or dread of, such a 
contest. “ Suppose,” said he, “ I were to disarm the nine, 
and put a sword in the hand of the tenth?” It was very 
clear on which side would be the victory. In fact the parlia¬ 
ment, by having engrossed all the power of the state, and 
by having made itself responsible for every thing, had become 
very unpopular, and the opinion of its corrupt motives was 
almost universal. 

This opinion it was insane enough to increase. In framing 

! an act, under which the new parliament was to be elected, it 
provided that all the members of the existing parliament 
should retain their seats as a matter of right, and Cromwell, 
seeing that this encroaching attempt to perpetuate their 
power had given general offence, determined at once to dis¬ 
solve them. As was usual w T ith him, he affected the greatest 
reluctance to adopt a step which he represented as forced on 
him by the importunity of his friends, and the conviction of 
his duty to God. He declared that the thought of it made 
his hair stand on end ; that he had with tears besought God 
to excuse him from taking it; that, had he his free choice, 
he would rather be torn in pieces than take it: but, when he 
had satisfied his hypocrisy by these professions, he proceeded 
to act with as much resolution and promptness as if he had 
no such scruples. On the 20th of April, 1653, he surrounded 1653. 
the house with his soldiers, entered it himself, repeated his 
statement of the affliction which he felt, of his unwillingness 
to do what necessity forbade him to delay ; then, changing 
his tone, he began to reproach the members with their 
selfishness, their indolence, their covetousness, their injustice, 
and, announcing that the Lord had done with them, bade 
them begone, and make room for honester people. Many 
refused to acknowledge his right to dissolve them. Harrison, 
one of the most fanatical of his officers, pulled the speaker 
from his chair. He himself called his soldiers into the 
apartment, and, lifting up the mace, desired them to take 
away that bauble; then, loading many of the members with 
personal abuse, calling them drunkards, profligates, and 
cheats, he waited while his troops cleared the house, locked 
the door with his owm. hands, and, putting the key in his 
pocket, returned to Whitehall. The next day passers-by 








A.D. 

1053. 


430 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

were amused by a placard fastened on the door by some 
wag, perhaps a Royalist delighted at the downfal of the 
assembly he had so much reason to detest, giving legible 
notice that the house contained “ apartments to let, unfur¬ 
nished.” 

The people in general looked upon what had been done 
witli dissatisfaction : not that they regretted the parliament, 
which had long forfeited their esteem and their sympathy; 
but that they saw in its violent dissolution a fresh proof that 
the whole kingdom was at the mercy of the army. The 
supremacy of the army was synonymous with the supremacy 
of Cromwell; nor did he attempt to disguise this fact; for, 
having formed a new council of state, of which he himself 
was president, he affixed his own signature alone to the 
notices which it issued, and disregarded every law under 
which parliaments had hitherto been assembled by choosing 
all the members himself, and summoning them to meet, by 
his own authority, as captain-general of the commonwealth. 
This assembly, called by some Barebone’s parliament, from 
the absurd name, Praise God Barebone, assumed by one of 
its most insignificant members, and by others the little 
parliament, from its consisting of only 120 persons, speedily 
made itself odious to all classes; and after a short time a 
majority voted their own dissolution, and the minority, 
which resisted, was again turned out by force by Cromwell. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

THE COMMONWEALTH (CONTINUED). 

Cromwell conceived that the time was now come when he 
might openly assume the supreme authority. The name of 
king he did not venture to take; but, acting under his 
instructions, Lambert, one of his most trusted officers, pro¬ 
posed to his comrades to declare him protector of the king¬ 
dom. The proposal was unanimously agreed to ; and, on the 
16th of December, 1653, a few days after the dissolution of 
the last parliament, a deputation of many of the chiefs of 
the army, the judges, and others, went in procession to- 
Westminster Hall, where Cromwell was awaiting them, and 
entreated him to accept the office of protector of the com¬ 
monwealth. He readily assented to their petition, and 










XLIII.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 431 

thenceforth took up his abode at Whitehall, the very palace 
which had been the scene of the execution of Charles. 

The extreme Republicans, and the most violent of the 
fanatics, unable to disguise from themselves that, by their 
aid, Cromwell had arrived at power which was sovereignty 
in every thing but name, were furious; but their anger and 
their resistance were unavailing. The protector soon showed 
them that, whatever limitations he might have desired to 
place on the authority of Charles, he himself would admit of 
none. Harrison, for objecting to his domination, was, by 
his edict, deprived of his command, and banished from the 
metropolis ; Lilburne, who during the late session of par¬ 
liament had been tried for sedition, and acquitted, he never¬ 
theless detained in prison during the remainder of his life; 
and others, who had no office of which they could be 
deprived, and who had the prudence to avoid the commission 
of any overt act which could possibly be made the subject of 
a prosecution, were, on the mere suspicion of disaffection to 
the new government, seized, and sold as slaves, to expiate 
their political heresy in the pestilential plantations of Bar- 
badoes. He had other resources besides force. With those 
whom he thought it possible to cajole into submission he 
would closet himself for hours, lamenting with them, praying 
with them, crying with them, calling God to witness that, 
had he been permitted the choice, he would have preferred a 
shepherd’s crook to the general’s baton, and that it was only 
in obedience to the evident will of Providence that he had 
consented to be invested with his present authority. But 
there were some who could neither be intimidated by his 
severity, nor won by his caresses. The Royalists, more ex¬ 
asperated than ever by his open assumption of the supreme 
power, began to form plots for his assassination, certainly 
with the privity of some of Charles’s courtiers, if not of 
Charles himself; and though Cromwell, who had spies on all 
their actions, was informed of these conspiracies in time to 
baffle them, and to punish the conspirators, yet the know¬ 
ledge of their persevering and unscrupulous enmity kept 
him in a state of continued apprehension, so that he con¬ 
stantly wore armour under his clothes, and carried loaded 
pistols, one of which on one occasion went off in his pocket, 
and was more nearly proving fatal to him than the dagger 
of the assassin. In one instance the royalist party broke 
out into open insurrection; a gentleman of the name of 


A.D. 

1G54. 



432 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Penruddock entering Salisbury with 200 cavalry, and pro- 

16o4 ‘ claiming Charles II. as king. But this premature rising 
was easily put down, and Cromwell determined, as far as 
possible, to crush the whole body of Eoyalists ; and, in spite 
of the act of indemnity which had been passed a year or two 
before, he, by his own authority, imposed a heavy yearly tax on 
the estates of all who had ever sided with the late king, and 
appointed a number of his military officers to collect it, 
whose rapacity and oppression made even that iniquitous 
exaction more intolerable still. He also erected a high 
court of justice, as arbitrary as the Star Chamber, and even 
more formidable in some respects, inasmuch as it inflicted 
the punishment of death, so that the trial by jury was 
practically abolished in the most important causes; and 
even in civil suits he at times interfered, commanding 
plaintiffs to desist from actions which they had commenced, 
or intimidating the judges so that they did not dare to give 
decisions contrary to his expressed wishes or opinions. 

But though he thus openly trampled law and justice 
under foot, he felt it necessary to make a show of ruling 
according to some prescribed constitutional forms, and, 
with this view, he drew up what he called an instrument of 
government, regulating the arrangement of the executive 
power, which was to be vested wholly in himself, and of the 
legislative power, which was to be shared between him and 
one chamber of members of parliament elected by the people ; 
and providing also for the maintenance of a standing army 
of 30,000 men. He likewise new-modelled the representa¬ 
tion of the three kingdoms, which he had already united by 
a public ordinance; and which now were enjoined to send 
their representatives to one common parliament. Eour 
hundred members were allotted to England and Wales, 
thirty to Ireland, the same number to Scotland, and the 
right of returning them was taken from many towns which 
had latterly fallen into decay, and given to others which 
had recently risen to importance; so that, in many re¬ 
spects, the principles of the reform bill of our own time 
were anticipated in a way that many, even of the Boyalists, 
approved. 

Cromwell here displayed important legislative talents; but, 
in his treatment of the parliament itself, he showed neither 
wisdom nor magnanimity: the members were allowed 
neither freedom of speech, nor a choice of the subjects for 


I 


XL 111 -] THE COMMONWEALTH. 433 

their debate ; the form of government was not even to be 
discussed; and when, in spite of the restrictions with which 
he had fettered them, their language, and the pretensions 
which they advanced, appeared too bold, he addressed a 
long harangue to them, in which he told them explicitly 
that they were only a free parliament as long as they sub¬ 
mitted to his authority, which, as conferred upon him by 
both God and man, was equivalent to any hereditary title ; 
and required them to sign a paper pledging themselves 
never to meddle with what he called the foundations of the 
established government. Above 150 members refused to sign 
it, and were turned out; but those who remained were not 
obsequious enough to satisfy his arbitrary will; they even 
reduced some of the estimates for the public service which 
he caused to be presented to them, and at last proceeded 
to resolve that a bill for the settlement of the government 
of the commonwealth, which they were discussing, needed 
not the consent of the protector to make it a law. He was 
not slow to take up the gauntlet thus thrown down to him; 
at the end of January, 1655, he dissolved them; and for 
more than two years governed without a parliament; thus 
imitating the conduct of the late king in its most unconsti¬ 
tutional part. 

In another point also he showed an inclination to copy 
the worst portions of his predecessor’s policy. He professed 
indeed to adopt the principles of religions toleration; but, 
in practice, no one was ever less inclined to them. A 
lloman Catholic priest was hanged, the episcopal clergy 
were deprived of their livings, laymen of the same per¬ 
suasion were forbidden to receive them as chaplains or 
tutors to their children, and numbers of learned and pious 
men were reduced to indigence by the severity with which 
these arbitrary edicts were executed. It was only the secta¬ 
ries who renounced episcopacy who met with indulgence, 
and, what they greatly needed, protection from the fury of 
each other. The leaders of these different sects were often 
admitted to private conferences in which they were allowed 
to lecture him at what length they pleased; and they were 
greatly edified by his God-fearing language, his docile humi¬ 
lity, his devout tears. They would have been less pleased 
had they seen him rub his hands after their departure, and 
say to his cousin Waller, the poet, who was witness to 
many such meetings, “ Come, cousin, we must talk to these 


A.D. 

1654. 


1655. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


434 



a.d. folks in their own jargon; but now we may converse as we 
1655. p]ease.” 

In one respect only did he put himself in open opposition 
to the fanatical party to whom he so much trusted as the 
firmest allies of his government. There was no greater 
object of their animosity than the two universities : they 
detested their system of education; they cast a covetous 
eye upon their riches, and in the Barebone parliament their 
entire abolition, and the confiscation and sale of their estates, 
had been urged to a willing audience. But Cromwell 
had accepted the office of chancellor of Oxford, and in his 
youth had passed some time at Cambridge, and he was thus 
in some degree attached to both ; and not only preserved 
those ancient seats of piety and learning, but even medi¬ 
tated the foundation of another at Durham, to facilitate to 
the inhabitants of the northern counties the acquisition of 
advantages equal to those enjoyed by their more fortunate 
brethren of the south: in this instance again anticipating 
the events of our own generation. 

Commerce also was an object of his eager solicitude. He 
established a council with the especial charge of providing 
for the extension of that great source of national wealth, 
and for the encouragement of navigation, our pre-eminence 
in which is the surest foundation of the national safety. He 
renewed the charter of the East India Company, increased 
its privileges, and applied himself to the amelioration of many 
institutions, and the reform of many abuses, hoping by this 
display of a desire to consult the happiness and the rights 
of the people in general to efface the impression which his 
tyranny towards individuals had inevitably created, wdiile in 
Ireland and Scotland his second son, Henry Cromwell, and 
• Monk, a brave and skilful soldier, preserved tranquillity by 
a judicious mixture of firmness and indulgence. His foreign 
policy was of a more uniform and of a more successful cha¬ 
racter. He made peace with the Dutch, who were greatly 
dispirited by the event of an action which took place shortlv 
before he became protector, and in which Monk commanded 
the English fleet. The number of ships which they lost 
was small; but Van Tromp himself was killed, and his loss 
left them without any admiral equal to cope with the daring 
ol the British sailors. With other foreign nations he found 
it easy to increase his alliances; they saw the energy of 
his government, and were ignorant of the extent to which 


XL1II.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 435 

arbitrary measures had created disaffection. One of the 
last acts of Christina, queen of Sweden, the eccentric 
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, was to sign a treaty with 
Whitelocke, whom he had sent on a special embassy to her 
court; and by other treaties with Denmark and Portugal 
he secured important commercial advantages for the nation. 
Yet his desire for foreign connexions never led him to sub¬ 
mit to the very smallest injury or slight, of which he gave a 
remarkable instance shortly after the signing of the Portu¬ 
guese treaty. Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to the Portuguese 
ambassador, fancying that he had been insulted in a dispute 
with a gentleman at the Exchange, returned the next day to 
the same spot faith a long train of armed servants, and 
either out of mistake, or out of wantonuess, killed a gentle¬ 
man who had borne no part in the quarrel of the preceding 
day. Cromwell immediately sent officers to seize him; 
though he had taken refuge in the house of his brother, the 
ambassador, and in spite of his invoking the law of nations, 
which, as he maintained, held the whole train of an ambas¬ 
sador inviolable, he had him brought to trial, and beheaded 
on Tower Hill for the murder. 

At one time he entertained the design of uniting all the 
Protestant states of Europe in one common interest, and 
of establishing a council composed of deputies from each to 
meet at fixed intervals; and, though this project came to 
nothing, he took every opportunity of putting himself for¬ 
ward as the champion of the Protestant interest; compelling 
the duke of Savoy to desist from a persecution which he 
meditated against the Vaudois, and by his active interposi¬ 
tion obtaining from Louis XIV. pardon for the Huguenots, 
who had rendered themselves justly liable to severe punish¬ 
ment by exciting formidable riots at Nismes ; indeed, his 
interest at the French court gradually rose to such a height, 
that, though they did not withdraw the pension assigned to 
Charles II., they treated him with so much indifference, 
that he withdrew from their territories, and settled at 
Cologne, from which city he subsequently removed to 
Bruges, which continued his chief residence till his restora¬ 
tion. 

Yet with this domestic and foreign security and power, 
Cromwell was not content. He was still eager for aggran¬ 
dizement at home; he could not be satisfied without the 
title as well as the authority of a king; and he thought 

r f 2 


A.D. 

1655— 
1657. 








436 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH, 

a.d. military glory and conquest the readiest means of gaining 
1655— the acquiescence of the people, or, in other words, of the 
army. Accordingly he determined on war, and in the 
winter of 1654 he began to prepare a large force, both 
of ships and soldiers, the destination ot which was kept a 
profound secret. He himself went down to Portsmouth to 
superintend the operations ; and on one occasion was followed 
down the street by a crowd of sailors’ wives, vociferously 
inquiring to what country he was about to send their 
husbands. “ The ambassadors of France and Spain,” he 
replied, “ would give me a million apiece to answer your 
question.” He had not, however, found it difficult to decide 
on the enemy to be attacked; it was not easy to keep up a 
close connexion with both France and Spain, and there 
were many reasons why a war with the latter power would 
be the more popular. Spain was a country far more exclu¬ 
sively Homan Catholic than France, where, as yet, the 
Protestants enjoyed a considerable degree of indulgence 
legally secured to them; secondly, Spain was far weaker 
in Europe than France; and lastly, her extensive colonies 
in America and the West Indies rendered her far richer, 
and also far more vulnerable. Spain, therefore, was the 
object of the destined attack, which Cromwell determined to 
make, not only without issuing any declaration of war, but 
with such deceit and treachery, that, when he sent Blake to 
the Mediterranean with his fleet intended to act against the 
coasts of Spain itself, he wrote a letter with his own hand to 
the king, Philip IV., informing him that the sole object of 
the expedition was to protect the British trade in the 
Mediterranean, and that the admiral was charged to avoid 
doing the least injury to the friends and allies of the com¬ 
monwealth, and especially to the Spaniards. This letter had 
scarcely reached Madrid when Penn and Venables sailed, 
with orders to attack St. Domingo, one of the most im¬ 
portant of the Spanish islands. Penn was the admiral, 
Venables the general of the expedition. Though both brave 
men, neither was very skilful; they were jealous of each 
other, and the misunderstandings which arose between them 
caused the total failure of the attack. They were repulsed 
with considerable loss ; but so uniform was the good fortune 
of Cromwell, that from this disaster he reaped a greater 
benefit than he could have expected from the success of his 
original design. Unwilling to return home without making 


XL11I.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 437 

an effort to retrieve their reputation, the two commanders 
decided on attacking Jamaica: it surrendered almost with¬ 
out resistance, and that rich and fertile island has ever since 
remained an important possession of the British crown. 

Meanwhile Blake had been active in the Mediterranean; 
and after compelling some of the Italian princes to make 
satisfaction for having allowed Rupert to sell in their har¬ 
bours English merchantmen, of which he had made prize, 
though failing, at the same time, to extort toleration for the 
English Protestants settled in their countries, he turned 
his attention to the more honourable task of chastising the 
corsairs of the African coast. He bombarded Tunis, and 
burnt the fleet lying in that port: the deys of Tripoli and 
Algiers submitted without resistance to his demands, and he 
had the honour and happiness of restoring liberty to numbers 
of fellow-Christians and fellow-countrymen, who had believed 
themselves doomed for life to all the horrors of barbarian 
slaverv. 

Hitherto he had abstained from hostilities against Spain; 
and the first exertion of his power towards that kingdom 
ought hardly to be called so. Some of his sailors, being on 
shore at Malaga, had insulted the host on its passage through 
the streets; a tumult ensued, in which one of the priests, 
who took part in the procession, excited the populace to in¬ 
flict summary punishment on the insulters of their religion. 
The sailors, severely beaten, escaped to their ships with 
difficulty, and complained to their admiral of the treatment 
which they had received. He demanded the surrender 
of the priest. It was to no purpose that the governor of the 
town represented that he was unable to comply; that in 
Spain a priest was exempt from all jurisdiction of any civil 
power. Blake replied, that if he were not surrendered in 
three hours, he would burn the town. The priest came on 
board; after hearing his statement, Blake pronounced his 
own sailors wholly in the wrong, and dismissed him in 
honour; telling him, that if he had addressed a complaint to 
him of their conduct, he would have punished them severely, 
but that he would make all the world know that an English¬ 
man was only to be tried and punished by an Englishman. 
However monstrous this pretension was, its assertion was so 
conformable with Cromwell’s ideas, that he read to his 
council with great exultation the despatch in which Blake 
related the occurrence, telling them that that was the spirit 


A.D. 

1655— 
1657. 








438 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. in which to treat foreigners, and that he would make the 
name of Briton as formidable as that of Homan had ever 
been. 

As soon as the news of the attack on St. Domingo and 
the capture of Jamaica reached Spain, Philip declared war 
against England; and, to render it more effectual, made a 
treaty with Charles, promising to aid in his restoration with 
6000 men, provided that Charles was able also to raise a 
force among his natural subjects, and to detach the Irish 
who were serving in the armies of France (then at war with 
Spain) from the service of that country. Blake, being on 
the spot, at once proceeded to blockade Cadiz, where the 
galleons from Peru were expected. One of his detached 
squadrons burnt two, and took two more, loaded with 
immense treasures, while he himself attacked a much larger 
fleet which lay in the harbour of Santa Cruz; and though 
the port was fortified in a most formidable manner, he forced 
his way in, and destroyed every ship. It was his last exploit; 
his health had been long failing, and, though he was eager 
to return and die at home, he expired before he could reach 
land, leaving behind him a high character for honesty, 
bravery, and humanity, and for naval skill which at that 
time had never been surpassed. 

The Spanish war, like all other wars, could only be main¬ 
tained at a great cost; and Cromwell, in spite of his love 
of absolute power when exercised by himself, perceived 
plainly that it was unpopular in the kingdom, and that 
the levying of taxes by his own single authority was pro¬ 
ducing great discontent. This discontent he proposed to 
remove by calling a new parliament; but first he sought to 
lay the blame of it on others, and issued a proclamation, 
commanding a general fast, in which the whole nation 
should pray to God to show them the Achan, who had 
provoked Him in his displeasure to suffer disorder to reign 
in the land. Some of his subjects thought that the cause 
of the evils complained of might be ascertained without the 
aid of revelation ; and sir Harry Vane, from his retirement 
in Lincolnshire, published a pamphlet, which traced them 
to the substitution of the authority of one man for the 
republic, in the hope of which he had borne his part in 
the resistance to the king, and proposed a return to that 
form of government as the best, if not the only remedy. 
It was notorious that a large party, including such men as 


XLIII.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 439 

Bradshaw, the president of the court that condemned 
Charles, shared the same opinions, and Cromwell summoned 
him and Vane before the council. Bradshaw was spared, 
but Vane was committed to prison, as were many of the 
old royalist party; and when Cromwell thought that by 
this severity he had deterred others from opposition, he 
issued writs for the new parliament. He took great pains 
to secure the return of members favourable to his interests, 
not only by corruption of every sort, but even by imprison¬ 
ing some of those who were likely to prove too successful 
as candidates. On the other side the more violent sectaries 
and Republicans sought by formidable riots to procure the 
triumph of their partisans, and were so far successful as to 
effect the return of full a hundred members, resolved to 
check every attempt of the protector to strengthen or 
extend his power. The parliament met on the 17th of 
September, 1656. Cromwell opened it with an angry and 
threatening speech, concluding, however, with a paraphrase 
of the eighty-fifth Psalm, in which David expresses his 
exultation at the renewed favour of the Lord, who had 
turned again the captivity of Jacob ; but this address was 
delivered not in the apartment where the members met, 
but in the painted chamber; and on the members quitting 
it to take their seats in their usual place of debate, they 
found guards posted at the door, who prevented every one 
from entering whose election had been distasteful to the 
protector. Above a hundred representatives of the people 
were thus excluded; and Cromwell flattered himself that 
he had thus escaped all danger of opposition to his designs. 
He was greatly mistaken. Even those members who had 
been allowed to enter, felt that the dignity of their position 
would be greatly lessened if they owed their seats not to 
the election of their countrymen, but to the permission of 
a single individual; and they determined to inquire of the 
council why their brethren had been excluded. Eiennes, 
the keeper of the great seal, had the boldness to reply 
that, as the article of the instrument of government which 
regulated elections enjoined the electors to choose none 
but men of integrity, good conduct, and such as feared 
God, it of necessity belonged to the council to decide 
whether those whom they elected deserved such a descrip¬ 
tion, and that they had decided that those whom the guards 
had been ordered to exclude did not deserve it. The auda- 


A.D. 

1655— 

1657. 






440 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. cious arrogance of this avowal only increased the universal 
1655— discontent; but, fortunately for Cromwell, the news of 
1657 ‘ Blake’s last successes arrived just at this moment, and 
reconciled people to a government, the domestic tyranny 
of which would have appeared insupportable, if it had not 
been for its foreign triumphs. 

Forgetting its wrongs in its exultation, the parliament 
voted supplies for the war, passed one bill to exclude 
Charles II. and all his descendants from the throne, and 
another to ensure the safety of the protector. Encouraged 
by these demonstrations of good will (though the royalist 
party thought his difficulties so great, that more than one 
of them openly proposed to him to undertake the restora¬ 
tion of Charles), he proceeded more boldly in his design 
to obtain the title of king; and one of his tools, named 
Jephson, made a formal motion to confer it upon him. A 
second motion to the same effect was made by Christopher 
Pack, one of the city members; and it was decided that the 
house should present an address to him, entreating him 
to assume that title. A committee of officers approached 
him with a similar petition. Cromwell professed to feel 
scruples about complying with their request, and a com¬ 
mittee was appointed to discuss the matter with him, he 
hoping, no doubt, that the reasons which the conductors 
of the argument would advance would overcome the un¬ 
willingness of others to see him assume that dignity. In 
the mean time his agents were diligent in ascertaining the 
feelings of the army, whom, even for an object so near his 
heart, he could not venture to offend. Those feelings were 
easily ascertained. General Fleetwood, who had married his 
daughter, and Pride, who had been his agent in expelling the 
relics of the long parliament, declared openly against his 
calling himself a king. Some said that the army would 
mutiny, others that he would be assassinated. At last he 
most unwillingly abandoned the idea, and gave a distinct 
refusal to the parliamentary commissioners. 

An extension of his authority as protector did not seem 
open to the same objections; and bills were passed assigning 
him a large revenue for life, giving him the right of naming 
his successor, and authorizing him also to nominate mem¬ 
bers to sit in a separate chamber as a house of lords. As 
this was the first legal establishment of the protectorate, 
for hitherto his discharge of that office had not been sane- 


XLIII.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 441 

i 

tioned by parliament, and was a manifest usurpation, lie a.d. 
was again inaugurated with great pomp in Westminster 
Hall, and every member of either house of parliament was 
compelled to take an oath of allegiance to him; so that his 
person was thus invested with the same sacred inviolability 
as that of a crowned king. The creation, however, of his 
new peers was only to be for life, and of those to whom 
the honour was proffered a great number refused it. In 
spite of his general success in other matters, their refusal 
gave him great uneasiness, as betokeniDg a doubt of the 
continuance of his power; and this uneasiness grew into 
personal apprehension, on the appearance of a pamphlet, 
entitled “ Killing no Murder,” the work probably of a 
person of the name of Sexby, who had been concerned in 
more than one plot against his government, and one which 
spoke openly of his death as the only means for the de¬ 
liverance of the country. 

In his domestic affairs he was more fortunate, marrying 1C58. 
his daughters, who were still single, to two of the wealthiest 
and most ancient of the nobility, lord Falconbridge and 
Kich, the grandson and heir of the earl of Warwick; but 
in political matters he was less at his ease. When the 
parliament met again, he was far weaker than before; for, 
though the attendance in the new house of lords was but 
scanty, yet as those who did consent to accept seats there 
were chiefly men who had been his staunch supporters in 
the commons, their absence from the lower house was 
severely felt; and some of the motions brought forward 
were so unpalatable to him, that at the beginning of 1658 
he dissolved the parliament, throwing all the blame on their 
own impracticable conduct, and calling on Grod to judge 
between him and them. 

His rejection, however, of the kingly title had confirmed 
the greater part of the army in its fidelity to him, though 
some of the more violent fanatics still occupied themselves 
in plotting against him; and he sought to increase the 
confidence of his friends by laying before them the motives 
of the late dissolution, and seeming to court their sanction 
to, and approval of, the measure. In so doing he greatly 
exaggerated the dangers which threatened the public tran¬ 
quillity. It was true that the Koyalists were busier than 
ever with their intrigues. The marquis of Ormond had 
even come over to London in disguise to investigate the 


A.D. 

1658. 


442 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

chances of a successful rising; but it was also true that 
all their movements were betrayed to Cromwell by sir 
Eichard Willis, one of Charles’s most confidential advisers, 
and that he was thus enabled securely to defeat their pro¬ 
jects ; in fact, he did arrest all those whose conspiracies 
appeared to him of any real importance, and revived the 
high court of justice for the purpose of securing their con¬ 
demnation, which he was unwilling to trust to an unpacked 
jury. Several were executed, among them sir Henry » 
Slingsby, the uncle of his son-in-law, lord Falconbridge, 
who made great, but fruitless exertions to save him; yet, 
in spite of these precautions, and this sanguinary vengeance, 
Cromwell was more anxious and fearful than ever. He 
never went out alone, or without a guard; never returned 
home by the same road as that by which he had gone out; 
neyer slept two following nights in the same room, and 
had secret passages of escape made from most of his bed¬ 
rooms ; so timid had conscience made the most intrepid 
of men. 

A ray of military success was reserved to comfort his 
latter days. In accordance with a treaty made with France 
the preceding year, he had sent 0000 men to serve under 
the orders of Turenne against the Spaniards. The prince 
of Conde, though a Frenchman, and the duke of York, 
afterwards James II., were in the Spanish army; but the 
Spanish general was jealous of Conde’s military renown, 
and, in spite of his remonstrances, decided on fighting a 
battle for the relief of Dunkirk, which Turenne was be¬ 
sieging closely, rather against his own judgment, in order 
to gratify Cromwell. In the battle which took place, the 
English troops displayed the most distinguished gallantry. 
The victory was complete; and when Dunkirk fell, it was 
delivered up to Cromwell, according to agreement. 

He was beginning to think of summoning a fresh parlia¬ 
ment, and with that view was seeking to conciliate some 
whose opposition he had most reason to dread, when he 
sustained a severe blow in his own family by the death of 
his favourite daughter, Mrs. Claypole, who on her deathbed 
lamented to him the crimes of which, even in her partial 
judgment, he had been guilty. His son-in-law Eicli had 
died a short time before, and these vexations, joined to 
the continual apprehensions which agitated him, threw him 
into a fever, which soon assumed a character that alarmed 


XLII1.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 443 

the physicians, though some of the fanatical preachers who 
had access to him, assured him that the Lord had revealed 
to them the certainty of his recovery. The physicians proved 
the most accurate judges. The 3rd of September, the anni¬ 
versary of the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, he had 
always accounted a day of especial good fortune to him ; 
in the afternoon of that day he died, in the fifty-ninth year 
of his age, and not quite ten years after he had practically 
secured to himself the supreme power by the death of the 
king. 

Cromwell was descended from a gentleman’s family in the 
county of Huntingdon; and in early youth had led a dis¬ 
sipated life, which, however, he soon abandoned for practices 
more agreeable to religion, though his devotion, as is very 
usual with such sudden converts, assumed the character 
of fanaticism and superstition. As a member of parlia¬ 
ment he did not at first take a leading part in the debates, 
for he was not gifted with eloquence, though the obscurity 
of many of his harangues probably proceeded as much from 
design as from any deficiency in the power of expressing 
himself clearly. Still he gave such indications of ability 
and resolution, that Hampden, who was his kinsman, pro¬ 
phesied his future eminence if ever civil war should break 
out in the kingdom. When it did break out his ambition 
speedily obtained the predominance over his religious feel¬ 
ings, and, though w r e cannot pronounce how soon he began 
to entertain the idea of killing the king and reigning in 
his place, it is clear that Charles’s death was wholly his 
work, and that his object in it was to secure his own suc¬ 
cession to the kingly power, if not to the kingly dignity. 
To this end all his military talents, which were considerable, 
and all his statesmanlike ability, which was of a far higher 
order, were steadily directed: nor were any scruples of re¬ 
ligion, or of humanity, or of good faith, ever permitted to 
interfere with its attainment. 

As a ruler, we must recollect in the first place, that, till the 
last year of his life, his power was an undisguised usurpation. 
His original assumption of the protectorate was a compliance 
with the petition of a few persons, not authorized to express 
any opinion but their own; it rested simply on force, that 
is, on the support of the army; and the sanction latterly 
given to it by the parliament was a mere farce; for a body so 
elected, and so winnowed of all members obnoxious to him, 


A.D. 

1658. 


444 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. had no right whatever to be considered as speaking the sense 

1(»58. 0 f the na tion. Nor did the manner in which he exercised 
his power at home make any atonement for the means by 
which he acquired it. It is true that his project of a legis¬ 
lative union between the three kingdoms was a wise design, 
and the alterations which he made in the representation were 
for the most part well-imagined and beneficial reforms; but, 
in other respects, his government was an unmitigated and 
merciless tyranny. Tor a long time, in proportion to the 
brief duration of his sway, he governed without a parliament, 
raising taxes by his own authority, imposing heavy penalties 
on a large class of his subjects in the same illegal manner. 
By his high court of justice he put to death a great number 
of persons whom he studiously deprived of a fair trial; and 
even sold free-born Englishmen for slaves, an atrocity un¬ 
exampled in any other country in Europe. 

It is his foreign policy which gained him the respect of 
his contemporaries, and which has given his name its renown 
in the eyes of posterity. It was not always moderate or 
equitable, for there can be no doubt that the war with Spain 
was one of unprovoked aggression, and not wholly free from 
the imputation of treachery; but, in general, it was bold, 
energetic, spirited, and dignified. It may be judged of by 
its fruits. Never, not even in the time of Elizabeth, had the 
reputation of England stood so high upon the Continent as 
during the few years that the sceptre, or the sword oc¬ 
cupying the place of the sceptre, was in Cromwell’s hands ; 
nor had the most legitimate monarch been so universally 
courted, or found his wishes so deferentially attended to. 
Perhaps he owes some of his reputation with posterity to 
the contrast forced upon us between him and the worthless 
prince who succeeded him; but the fact remains, that 
during his lifetime, when there was no opportunity of 
making such a comparison, England, which for half a 
century had lost her weight on the Continent, did not only 
resume her former position, but greatly strengthened it. 
This is, of itself, great praise for the ruler of a nation. We 
may add that, under his rule, the power of England abroad 
was, for the most part, beneficially exerted; it was em¬ 
ployed to protect the Protestants of France, to save the 
primitive worshippers of the Piedmontese valleys, to chastise 
the infidel pirates of the African coast, and to restore 
Christian captives to unlooked-for liberty. 


XLIY. ] THE COMMONWEALTH. 445 

If we except his religious hypocrisy, which seems to have A ;, D - 
been indispensable to the successful management of his 1Go8 ‘ 
chief supporters, there was nothing mean or petty in his 
character. His very crimes bore a stamp of greatness on 
them. We may not cease to visit with the most unshrinking 
condemnation the duplicity of his conduct while seeking 
the supreme power, his murder of his sovereign, his inhu¬ 
man massacres in Ireland, his fierce tyranny when possessed 
of power; but, on the other hand, his dauntless courage, his 
military skill, superior to that of all his countrymen except 
perhaps Montrose, his insight into the character of his 
fellow-men, his genius for moulding them to his own wishes, 
his vigorous assertion of the dignity of his own country 
among foreign nations, his success in increasing her pros¬ 
perity and reputation, must always, and deservedly, secure 
him a very high place among the rulers of nations. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE COMMONWEALTH (CONTINUED). 

Ceomwell had not appointed a successor by any formal 1858— 
instrument, but those who surrounded his dying bed an- 
nounced that he had declared his eldest son, Richard, his 
heir ; who now succeeded to his authority with the general 
consent, and was immediately recognized by foreign powers. 

The Trench court was especially forward in acknowledging 
him ; Louis put on mourning for Oliver as for a legitimate 
king, and Mazarin made his secretary Thurloe the most 
profuse offers of assistance. Tor a short time the hopes to 
which the death of their powerful master had given birth in 
the breasts of the Royalists and other malcontents seemed 
likely to be disappointed, but they soon began to revive, as 
the dissatisfaction of the army with the new government 
became apparent. 

Richard had hitherto lived as a quiet country gentleman, 
concerning himself but little in politics, still less in military 
affairs; and it was soon seen that he had no talents for 
either. Those of his advisers who had any statesmanlike 
ability were not displeased at his want of it, feeling compe¬ 
tent and being not unwilling to govern the country in his 
name; but the chief officers, who considered that Oliver 





446 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. had owed the attainment and also the preservation of his 
16o8 power solely to the army, were indignant at seeing him 
10‘oj. succee ded by one, who had no such claim to the respect or 
attachment of the soldiers, and began at once to cabal 
against him. The chiefs of the English army were Eleet- 
wood, Desborough, and Lambert. Fleetwood was Cromwell’s 
son-in-law, Desborough his brother-in-law ; but Lambert was 
the most skilful soldier. Fleetwmod was a weak, vain man, 
with no settled views; Desborough a sullen Republican, 
eager chiefly for gain, and so unwilling to acknowledge any 
supreme power, that he had not always been submissive to 
the ascendancy even of Oliver himself. He was far less 
likely to be a quiet subject of Richard, whom he despised. 
Lambert was actuated by views of personal ambition, hoping 
ultimately to raise himself to the station occupied by 
Oliver, and not discerning that military skill, the only 
point in which he resembled him, was the lowest of the 
qualities by which Cromwell had acquired or maintained his 
authority. 

There was one other general, of superior abilities and 
influence to any of the three, but he was at a distance from 
London, the immediate scene of action. It was seen after¬ 
wards that his absence, both as keeping him aloof from the 
intrigues which were going on, and as preventing his troops 
from being influenced by the divisions of the rest of the 
army, greatly increased that influence. Monk had been for 
some time governor of Scotland, which he had kept in order 
with a firm hand, and without finding it necessary to have 
recourse to any unpopular measures of severity. He was 
an able soldier, having distinguished himself greatly at 
Dunbar, and also as commander of the fleet in the action 
in which Van Tromp was killed ; and his army, though not 
very numerous, had great confidence in him. He had also 
considerable political talents, not, indeed, of the highest 
order, but such as are eminently useful in revolutionary 
times; not far-sighted, but wary; not enterprising, but 
possessed of immovable coolness and presence of mind ; 
not disinterested, but willing to make his own interests 
harmonize with those of the nation; possessed of such 
impenetrable reserve, that not even to his own brother 
would he reveal his plans or his wishes. In dissimulation 
surpassing even Cromwell himself, he was a pilot eminently 
fitted, if not to direct the storm, at least to guide his bark 


XLIY -] THE COMMONWEALTH. 447 

in safety through it to the haven which he desired to reach ; a.d. 
for he had originally been an adherent of Charles, had 1658— 
served in his army, till he was taken prisoner by Fairfax at 
Nantwich, and it was only through distress that he was 
induced to accept the offers of Cromwell, who thought 
highly of his military skill, and to command a division of 
the army sent to reduce the Irish to subjection. 

On Bichard’s accession, he wrote him a letter, full of 
judicious advice on the management of the army, recom¬ 
mending him, among other things, to dismiss all the offi¬ 
cers whom he considered of doubtful fidelity; and though 
Bichard had not decision enough to follow this counsel, it 
was soon seen how desirable it would have been for him to 
have done so; for in the middle of October they presented 
an address to him, in which they begged him to appoint a 
soldier their commander-in-chief,—a measure which, in fact, 
would have placed him at the mercy of the army. He 
refused their demand ; they retired in silence, determined to 
renew" it at a favourable opportunity. 

He now summoned a parliament, issuing writs, not in 
accordance with the reformed system established by his 
father, but to the places which had returned members in the 
time of the monarchy. But the parliament proved hardly more 
manageable than the army. The republican members were 
especially violent, declaiming openly agaiust submission to 
the authority of any single individual; and, though they 
were unable to prevent the passing of a resolution acknowl¬ 
edging Bichard as protector, they succeeded in carrying 
clauses greatly limiting his power, and not indistinctly 
threatening its permanence. A subsequent debate on the 
question, whether the commons should acknowledge the 
authority of the house of lords, such as Oliver had made it, 
was still more ominous of the future. Many of the members 
spoke openly in praise of the old house of peers, as it sub¬ 
sisted before the civil war; many asserted its rights to be 
not dead, but dormant, and advised that they should be 
again convoked. Nearly all opposed the recognition of the 
motley assembly winch Oliver had substituted for them ; and 
few were deterred by the argument advanced by some of the 
officers, and some of the leading lawyers, that a restoration 
of the old peers could stand on no ground different from the 
restoration of Charles Stuart, and would be sure to lead to it. 

In the spring of the next year Fleetwood and Desborough, 





448 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. by artful representations of the discontent of the army, in- 

1659. duced Richard to convoke a council of officers to pacify 
them. His wiser councillors at once pointed out to him the 
peril in which the consent to this measure had placed him, 
and in fact they began without delay to show their intention 
to control both him and the parliament. At the end of a 
month he dissolved the council; but they refused compliance 
with his order for their dissolution, and continued to meet, 
and to plot more and more openly against his authority. In 
his perplexity Richard applied to Monk for support, olfering 
to settle 20,000/. a year on him, if he would hasten to his 
aid; but Monk declined to involve himself in what he 
clearly perceived to be a falling cause, and Richard felt him¬ 
self helpless. The officers summoned the army to meet 
them at St. James’s. Richard issued a proclamation com¬ 
manding them to meet him at Whitehall. It "was univer¬ 
sally disregarded, while the summons of the officers was 
obeyed. As soon as it was clear which part the soldiers had 
chosen, Desborough went to Richard to require him to dis¬ 
solve the parliament. He did not dare to refuse. It was 
dissolved ; and, soon afterwards, without consulting him, the 
council of officers summoned the remnant of the long parlia¬ 
ment, the Rump as it had been called, which Oliver had 
expelled six years before, to resume their places at West¬ 
minster as the council of the nation. 

Those who had hitherto been Richard’s chief councillors 
no longer interfered to resist the course of events, which 
they were unable to arrest, and Richard w T as virtually 
deposed. The parliament, now again wholly subservient to 
the army, sent him orders to leave Whitehall. So deter¬ 
mined did he for a moment seem to be to resist, that some 
of the Royalists actually urged him to declare for the king, 
and to go down to the fleet, embark, and hoist the royal 
standard; and he agreed to do so, provided they would 
assure him an estate of 20,000/. a year. But when the 
moment for the execution of these plans arrived he wavered, 
probably because he received letters from Mazarin, offering 
him both soldiers and money. The time for successful 
action of that kind passed by. In July he was forced to 
resign his power, and to content himself with an annuity of 
10,000/. a year for his life, and an estate of 5000/. a year for 
his heirs, and he retired to pass the rest of his days in 
obscurity and tranquillity. 


X LIV.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 449 

The Royalists were greatly encouraged. Charles’s affairs a.d. 
were managed abroad by Hyde with consummate prudence 
and dignity. The divisions among his enemies in England, 
and the general feelings of indignation at the insolence of 
the army were daily increasing; and Hyde’s friends at 
home had some grounds for their assertions when they wrote 
him word, that of all the parties in the island the king’s was 
decidedly the strongest. In fact it was so strong as not to 
be greatly discouraged nor greatly weakened by the betrayal 
by "Willis, whose treachery was not yet discovered by Hyde, 
of the plan of a general insurrection in the western coun¬ 
ties, and by its consequent failure in Cheshire, the only 
county in which the leaders proceeded to action, and where 
sir George Booth, after seizing Chester, was defeated and 
made prisoner by Lambert. The crafty Mazarin began to 
see that the commonwealth was not likely to preserve its 
existence much longer; and, though he himself would not 
as yet open any communication with the exiled princes, 
Turenne, his most trusted commander, made a tender of a 
large body of his best troops to Charles, with artillery, 
ships, money, and provisions; while Conde, the most for¬ 
midable leader of the French rebel party, made him offers of 
nearly similar character. 

The parliament began to be uneasy at the inferior position 
which they occupied, and sought to change it without con¬ 
sidering whether they were able to do so. The officers, on 
the-other hand, were desirous to secure the establishment of 
their power on a durable basis, and required the parliament 
to invest Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert with perma¬ 
nent commands, to whom they added Monk, in hopes to 
secure his alliance by making his interest identical with 
theirs. The parliament rejected their demand, and, relying 
on the republican feeling of some of the regiments, called 
those regiments to their aid, and prepared to encounter 
force by force. They found their mistake. The troops on 
whom thev most relied went over to Lambert, who then 
turned them out with as little ceremony as Cromwell had 
used six years before, and established a new council, which 
assumed the name of the Committee of Safety, to carry on 
the affairs of the commonwealth. 

These events made the king’s adherents more sanguine 
than ever. They saw that the violence of the army was 
likely to terrify all moderate men into wishing to be relieved 

G g 



450 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



a.d. from it, and Charles himself now ventured to write a letter 
1659. ]\f on k to invite him openly to espouse his cause. In 
Monk’s opinion, however, the time for an open display of his 
intentions had not yet arrived. It was a favourite saying of 
his, that the man who kept too closely to the heels of truth 
was in danger of having his brains kicked out, and the 
nearer the crisis came, the more close was his reserve. Still 
the forcible expulsion of the parliament was such a plain 
violation of every principle of government that he did not 
hesitate to declare his disapproval of it, and wrote to Len- 
thal, the speaker, to assure him of his support; and to 
Lambert to request, in a somewhat imperious tone, that the 
parliament might be replaced in its former position, and to 
announce his intention of upholding it. Lambert laid the letter 
before the Committee of Safety, and proposed to march at once 
at the head of an army to attack Monk. The committee ac¬ 
cepted his offer, but sent Monk’s brother-in-law, Clarges, and 
Talbot, the colonel of his regiment, with him, to endeavour to 
effect a reconciliation, if possible, without coming to an open 
rupture. Clarges and Talbot proceeded to Edinburgh, while 
Lambert with his troops waited at York. Monk, as was his 
habit, summoned his chief officers to a council, and, with 
their consent, despatched commissioners from his army to 
negotiate with the Committee of Safety. Valuable time 
was thus gained; and, before the end of November, he 
himself, at the head of his army, set out from Edinburgh on 
his march to England. He had proceeded but a very little 
way when he received notice that the envoys whom he had 
sent to England had been cajoled into agreeing to conditions 
wholly opposed to his views. His officers urged him at once 
to annul their agreement, as inconsistent with their instruc¬ 
tions : but he preferred sending fresh commissioners of 
greater firmness to reopen the negotiations, and continued 
his march towards the south. The attitude which he 
now assumed gave the supporters of the parliament so much 
encouragement that the old council of state, which had been 
superseded by Lambert’s Committee of Safety, ventured to 
reassemble, and sent Monk a formal appointment as captain- 
general of the army: it reached him at Berwick. About 
the same time Lawson, wdio commanded the fleet, also 
declared for the parliament; and Fleetwood, who was the 
chief officer left in London, fearing that the restoration of 
the king was almost inevitable, and that the only chance 


















XLIY.] THE COMMONWEALTH. 451 

of escaping such an event lay in the reassembling of the 
parliament, sent word to Lenthal that “ God had spit in the 
faces of the Committee of Safety,” and invited him to reassem¬ 
ble the members, that they might resume their deliberations. 
They met on the 26th of December, and at once began to 
quarrel among themselves as vehemently as ever. But the 
news of their having met at all was very satisfactory to 
Monk, who, on the 1st of January, 1660, crossed the Tweed, 
and entered England. He had gained another ally of great 
importance. Eairfax, though suffering from a cruel disease, 
had still great influence in the army, declared for the parlia¬ 
ment, and, being speedily joined by a number of troops, took 
possession of York. Lambert’s army melted away of itself 
at the news of this event and of Monk’s advance. Monk 
proceeded rapidly, still maintaining the most impenetrable 
reserve as to his ultimate intentions, so far as even to 
punish one officer who expressed an opinion that he was 
favourable to the return of the king. As he approached 
London petitions and deputations reached him, entreating 
him to declare for the summoning of a free parliament. He 
made no reply to such requests, nor did he take any decisive 
step till his arrival at St. Alban’s, when, on the plea that the 
troops in London had before now rebelled against the parlia¬ 
ment, he wrote to Lenthal to advise that they should be 
removed to a distance, and that the regiments which he had 
brought with him should be received in their quarters. The 
parliament adopted his counsels; some feeling that they had 
no choice, others hoping, by this display of confidence in 
him, to shame him into continuing his adherence to them; 
and, on the 3rd of Eebruary, Monk entered London at the 
head of his troops, and was now clearly the irresistible 
master of the city, of the parliament, and of the future fate 
of the nation. Still he concealed his sentiments for some days 
so completely that some of the Loyalists wrote to their 
friends abroad, that he was evidently a Bepublican at heart; 
and, though many of them trusted him so much that they 
returned from the Continent, and began to speak of their 
flourishing prospects, the parliament also was so assured of 
his protection as to venture on arresting several of them, 
and to pass a strong resolution against all who should coun¬ 
tenance any design in favour of Charles Stuart. They went 
further; a day or two afterwards the city declared against 
them, and the common council resolved to pay no more 

G g 2 


A.D. 

1659 . 


1660 . 


452 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. taxes till a free parliament met to impose them. They sent 

1C60. jytonk to compel the city to obedience, to destroy the bar¬ 
riers, gates, and portcullises. He executed their orders, 
and, when the rupture between the city and the parliament 
was thus made irretrievable, he reconciled himself to the 
citizens by writing an authoritative letter to the parliament, 
requiring them to dissolve themselves by a certain day, and 
in the mean time to issue writs for the election of a free 
parliament. 

It was many years since any event had diffused such uni¬ 
versal joy: the bells were rung, bonfires were lighted, the 
mob in its exultation would have gone down to Westminster 
and turned out the parliament at once, if they had not been 
prevented by Monk. At the same time, so certain was 
every one that a free parliament would recal the king, that 
Charles’s health was openly drunk in the streets. Yet still 
Monk hesitated to declare his intentions truly; as Vane 
said, “he had still several masks to pull off;” and some days 
after his letter to the parliament, which almost every one 
considered decisive of the king’s restoration, he avowed 
himself prepared to live and die for a commonwealth, and, 
on another occasion, protested that he would “ to the 
utmost oppose the setting up of Charles Stuart, or a house 
of peers.” He was so attached to dissimulation and false¬ 
hood, that he could not cease to dissemble and to feign even 
when nobody could be deceived. 

At the previous sittings of this parliament, since the 
death of Oliver, they had constantly refused to permit the 
members whom he had ejected before the death of the king, 
and who were chiefly Presbyterians, to take their seats. 
Prynne had struggled hard for his rights, and had been de¬ 
feated ; but now Monk compelled those who had objected 
to them to admit them, and thus fortified himself by the 
votes of a party, not indeed abstractedly favourable to the 
restoration of the king, but dreading that or any other 
imaginable event far less than the triumph of the Republi¬ 
cans. Again the parliament appointed Monk general-in¬ 
chief of the army; giving the command of the fleet to 
admiral Montague, who was well known as a staunch par¬ 
tisan of Charles. Yet, even now, the Republicans resolved 
to make one more struggle for victory; they still thought it 
possible to gain Monk over. He was believed to be very 
covetous; and to gratify this, always a darling vice where it 







XLIV.j THE COMMONWEALTH. 453 

exists at all, they moved the commons to present him with 
the palace at Hampton Court; hoping thus to engage him 
by his pecuniary interests for ever to oppose the restoration 
of the king; but his friends had the address to substitute 
for the gift of the palace a grant of 20,000Z.; so that Monk 
was enriched and yet unentangled. So cautious was he, that 
even yet he felt hardly sure of the army, and proceeded to 
secure it by slow degrees; substituting for the officers 
whom he doubted most as Republicans others on whose 
obedience he could more surely rely, and, simultaneously 
with this line of conduct, he hastened as much as possible 
the dissolution of parliament. As a last resource the Re¬ 
publicans offered him the protectorate for himself: he re¬ 
fused it, and three days afterwards, on the 16th of March, 
the last remnant of the long parliament dissolved itself, and 
issued writs for a new parliament. 

In the days of the monarchy a statue of Charles I. had 
stood in a niche in front of the Royal Exchange, which, at 
the time of his execution, had been thrown down, a Latin 
inscription being substituted in his place, “ Exit tyrannus, 
regum ultimus V* The day before the dissolution of parlia¬ 
ment, a man dressed as a painter, and accompanied by 
several soldiers, as if under the protection of the general, 
placed a ladder against the wall, and with a paint-brush 
effaced the disloyal inscription. As he descended from the 
ladder he threw up his cap, and cried, “ God bless Charles 
the Second.” The populace took up the shout; again the 
city blazed with bonfires, and it seemed that Charles might 
that day have resumed his throne with perfect safety. 

The Presbyterians began at once to treat with him ; wish¬ 
ing, with a singular want of appreciation of circumstances, 
to impose the same conditions on him that had been offered 
to his father while a prisoner in the Isle of Wight. But 
Charles had now received promises of service from Monk 
himself, and was not dismayed by the intelligence that, in 
his conversation with the Presbyterians, Monk declared 
himself favourable to the exaction of the terms proposed. 

On the 25th of April the parliament met; and, even 
before they had time to pass any resolutions, the feeling in 
favour of Charles displayed itself over the city and over the 
wdiole country. Some of the regicides were made prisoners 


A.D. 

1660. 


1 The tyrant has departed, the last of the kings. 


454 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. by the mob; the houses of Republicans were pillaged ; 

16G0. Cromwell’s widow hid her treasures in the house of a friend, 
and fled into Wales. The 1st of May was appointed by 
the commons for taking into consideration the state of the 
nation. On that day sir John Granville presented himself 
at the door of the house as the bearer of a letter from the 
king: he bore a similar letter to the lords ; and then pro¬ 
ceeded to deliver others to Monk, Montague, and the lord 
mayor. By lords and commons, by fleet, by army, and by 
the citizens they were received with acclamation. Both 
houses of parliament at once voted that, according to the 
fundamental laws of the kingdom, the government is, and 
ought to be, by king, lords, and commons. A large grant 
of money to the king and duke of York was voted unani¬ 
mously ; and a deputation from both houses was sent to 
Breda, where Charles w r as staying, to request his early 
return. The royal arms were again erected in public places, 
the royal statues were restored, the royal palaces were re¬ 
paired and refurnished wfith incredible despatch, and the 
whole nation was animated with one feeling of eager ex¬ 
pectation. On the 8th of May Charles was proclaimed 
with due formality in the city and at Westminster. On 
the 15th he arrived from Breda at the Hague, and received 
the parliamentary commissioners, and at the end of one 
week more, having first taken a graceful leave of the states 
general, and thanked them for the magnificent hospitality 
which he had received from them in his exile, he embarked 
on board Montague’s flag-ship, and on the 25th of May he 
landed at Dover. From Dover to London his journey was 
one long triumphal procession. “ Surely,” said he, “ i have 
been to blame in absenting myself so long from friends so 
eager to see me.” The 29th was his birthday ; he was 
thirty years of age. On that day, late in the evening, for 
his progress had been impeded by the crowds that blocked 
his w r ay, he arrived at Whitehall, wdiere the members of 
both houses of parliament awaited his coming. The speakers 
of each house presented him with a loyal address, to which 
he made brief, but gracious replies, and then, overcome with 
fatigue, with painful recollections, and with contending feel¬ 
ings, he offered up a thanksgiving to God for his restoration, 
and sought a welcome repose in that home, which, though 
his inheritance by birth, he had long despaired of revisiting, 
the time-honoured palace of the kings of England. 





XLY.] 


CHARLES II. 


455 


CHAPTER XLY. 


CHARLES II. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperor. 


Spain. a.d. 


Popes. A.D. 
Alexander VII. 


Leopold. 


Philip IV. 

Charles II. . . 1GG5 


France. 
Louis XIV. 


Clement IX. . 1G67 
Clement X. . . 1G7G 

Innocent IX. . 1G79 


“ The king shall enjoy his own again” had been for near a.d. 
twelve years the constant burden of the Cavaliers’ song. 1GC0. 
It had even of late been echoed by some of the party who 
originally were most opposed to his father, when driven to 
compare their actual experience of the iron tyranny of 
Cromwell, or of the unbridled insolence of the army, with 
their anticipation of the slighter evils which they had ap¬ 
prehended from the arbitrary disposition of Charles I. At 
first their triumph at the realization of their prophecies was 
great; but, after a time, both Royalists and Presbyterians 
began to view the recent events with less complacency, and 
the general elation was succeeded by as general a dissatis¬ 
faction. With the lower classes, indeed, Charles was 
popular to the end of his life, and his memory was long 
cherished by them with affection. They had not expected 
to gain any personal advantage from his restoration, they 
were not affected by the profligacy of his misgovernment, 
and they were more than their superiors accessible to the 
charm of his courteous affability and condescension. They 
were the higher ranks who felt aggrieved; and Charles 
was not so much to blame for their discontent as the un¬ 
reasoning hopes which they themselves had cherished, and 
the inherent difficulties presented by so anomalous a state 
of affairs. The Royalists had looked forward to a complete 
restoration of the estates of which they had been stripped, 
and to a monopoly of the royal favour for the future. The 
Presbyterians thought that by co-operating in the restora¬ 
tion they also had entitled themselves to some share of the 
king’s good will, and desired it to be shown in a toleration 
of their religious principles; but, though by virtue of a 
special act of parliament, the crown and the Church re¬ 
sumed possession of the property which had been alienated 
from them, it was found impossible, without risking a 




456 


HISTORY OF* ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. general convulsion, to deprive the purchasers of the con- 
im~~ ^ sca f e 4 estates of individuals of the lands which they had 
{) * bought. The legal difficulties of such a proceeding would 
have almost equalled the political difficulties, and those who 
obtained even a partial restitution were few in number. 

On the other hand, although at first a scheme was pro¬ 
posed of modifying the episcopal authority and the discipline 
of the Church, so as to satisfy the scruples of the Presby¬ 
terians ; although Baxter and Calarny were made chaplains 
to the king, a bishopric being offered to the former; and 
although a conference took place in the spring of 1661 
between the leading divines of the Church of England and 
of the Nonconformists, all these salutary designs were 
baffled by the violence of one party or the other, and in 
the end the Church of England was restored with all its 
pristine authority, and an act of uniformity, as stringent 
as any passed in any former reign, was enacted by the new 
parliament, and the presbyterian clergy were nearly all 
expelled from their livings for non-compliance with it. 

One of Charles’s first acts was to reward some of his 
adherents, and to conciliate some of the more respectable 
of his former opponents by honours and preferments. Monk 
was made duke of Albemarle; admiral Montague, earl of 
Sandwich ; and Hyde, to whom the great seal was delivered, 
earl of Clarendon. At the same time Hollis was created 
lord Hollis; Ashley Cooper, lord Ashley, and subsequently 
earl of Shaftesbury, by which title he is so much better 
known, that we shall always use it in speaking of him; 
while the earl of Manchester and lord Say received the 
appointments of lord chamberlain and lord privy seal. 

The next important transaction was the punishment of 
those who had been concerned in the death of Charles I. 
Before the meeting of the parliament, which invited the king 
to return, Monk had advised him to proclaim a general 
amnesty; and though this was more than his advisers were 
willing to grant, Charles in his declaration promised pardon 
to all, “ excepting only such persons as should be hereafter 
excepted by the parliament.” That body instantly began 
to decide who should be allowed, and who should be de¬ 
prived of the benefit of the royal clemency. A long debate 
took place on the 12th of May, while the king was still in 
Holland, and, after a fierce struggle, the number of victims 
was reduced to ten : six of the king’s judges; Cook, who had 







CHARLES IT. 


457 


XLV.] 

acted as attorney-general on his trial; Axtell and Hacker, 
who had commanded the guard at the trial and execution; 
and Peters, the fanatic preacher, who had urged the com¬ 
mission of the great crime from the pulpit. Vane and 
Lambert were also to be brought to trial, but their lives 
were to be spared. The trials were short, for the guilt of 
the prisoners was notorious; indeed, so far from denying 
it, many of them gloried in it, and went to their doom 
triumphing in being thought w r orthy to suffer for w r hat 
they still maintained to be a righteous cause. Vane and 
Lambert were tried at a later period, when Lambert was 
sentenced to imprisonment in Guernsey; but Vane, in 
spite of the mercy intended him by the parliament, was 
executed. The greatest criminals of all, Cromwell, Brad¬ 
shaw, and Ireton, had escaped the vengeance of their 
enemies by death. They were pronounced traitors by the 
parliament; but that was not sufficient. It was determined 
to inflict the punishment due to their treason on their 
remains ; and on the anniversary of the death of Charles 
their dead bodies were dug up, hung to the three corners 
of the gallows erected at Tyburn, their heads were cut off, 
and fixed in front of Westminster Hall, and their bodies 
thrown into a pit at the ordinary place of execution. To 
the punishment of the living regicides no one could object; 
but it w r as beneath a king to war with the dead, and to 
inflict a childish and fruitless vengeance on ashes that could 
neither feel an injury nor learn a lesson. 

In Scotland also an example w r as made of one or two of 
the principal supporters of the covenant, and enemies of 
the late king, especially of Argyle, though he was clearly 
protected by more than one act of indemnity passed in 
reference to that country; and episcopacy was established 
in that portion of the island as well as in England; Sharp, 
who had previously been a leader of the Presbyterians, 
being won over by the archbishopric of St. Andrew’s. 

It remained to disband the army, a measure which all 
parties were inclined to approve, as all feared its insubor¬ 
dination, yet which many for a while hesitated to urge, 
lest they might hereafter stand in need of its aid; but 
Clarendon easily convinced the king of its desirableness, 
and the whole force was paid off, except about 5000 guards, 
who would have shared the fate of their comrades, had it 
not been for an insurrection of the dangerous fanatics. 


A.D. 

lfjtIO — 

16 G 1 . 


458 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. called Fifth Monarchy-men, headed by one Venner, who 
1G(J1 raised a formidable riot in the streets of London, and were 
with difficulty prevented from doing serious injury by a 
regiment of guards which was marched against them. 

The affairs of Ireland also required a speedy settlement. 
No more difficult matter came before the council; for in 
no portion of the kingdom had greater outrages upon justice 
and upon the rights of property been committed. For¬ 
tunately there was a quantity of land in the island that as 
yet had never been assigned to any proprietors; and the 
authority of Ormond, who was made a duke, and reinstated 
in his office of lord-lieutenant, induced those who had been 
illegally enriched by the English parliament to relinquish a 
third of their possessions; and the portion thus ceded, 
added to that hitherto unappropriated, enabled the king 
in some degree to make amends to those who had suffered 
for their loyalty and for their religion. 

Many of these measures were the work of the parliament, 
which met in May, 1661. The assembly, which recalled 
the king, not having been summoned by royal authority, 
is called by lawyers a convention, rather than a parliament; 
and, as soon as it had provided for the pressing emergencies 
of the moment, it was dissolved, and a more regular par¬ 
liament summoned, which gave a great preponderance to 
the royalist and Church of England party; so that they 
were able also to pass two votes, which served no other 
purpose but that of' marking their final triumph over the 
Presbyterians : one ordering the covenant to be burnt by the 
common hangman; the other declaring that no possible 
illegality in the conduct of the king could justify forcible 
resistance to his authority; and to this last vote every 
member of a corporation in England was required to swear 
his assent. They soon carried their zeal further, enacting 
severe penalties against the Nonconformists. Tests were 
multiplied, and as each created a new set of offences, the 
gaols were filled with those whom the king in his original 
declaration had promised to protect, while even a single 
magistrate had power to sentence to transportation any who 
after two convictions should persist in attending Divine 
worship in a meeting-house. 

Not that this zeal for the Church implied the least regard 
for religion; which, with every other virtue except courage, 
seemed for a time banished from the country. Clarendon 





CHARLES II. 


459 


XLV.] 

indeed, and Southampton, the two principal ministers, were a.d. 
virtuous men; but the king himself, from his wandering and 1661 ~ 
uncertain career for many years, while passing his life in a 16G2 ‘ 
constant succession of hopes, disappointments, and intrigues, 
had contracted a dissolute recklessness of character, which 
broke out in the most selfish shamelessness of debauchery; 
and the example of which had the most pernicious effect on 
the morals of the whole kingdom. The Puritans, though 
sincere for the most part in their religious feelings, had not 
only not made religion attractive, they had even rendered 
her ridiculous: their sacrilegious insults to the worship of 
others, their rigorous enforcement of minute and vexatious 
points of outward discipline, their furious condemnation of 
the most popular and innocent recreations, their high- 
crowned hats, lank hair, uplifted eyes, and nasal twang, had 
irritated some, and afforded food for the scoffing of others; 
while the Cavaliers, to mark the difference between them¬ 
selves and these professors of exclusive piety, had plunged 
openly into the most outrageous dissoluteness, and had even 
affected a disregard of all moral and religious obligations, 
which many of them were at first far from feeling, though 
the habit of pretending to trifle with such subjects, ultimately 
produced among the generality of the party a real contempt 
for them. 

It was natural to expect that the king would marry, and 
very desirable that he should do so speedily. His brother 
James had lately married the daughter of lord Clarendon, 
and had already one child. But Charles wished to have a 
son of his own to succeed him. Only the year before his 
restoration, he had offered to marrv ITortense Mancini, the 
niece of cardinal Mazarin, but the cardinal had refused his 
proposal; and some of his friends had even countenanced the 
idea of his making Lambert’s daughter his wife, in order to 
secure that general’s aid towards his restoration: but now, 
princesses from almost every country in Europe were offered 
to his acceptance ; and, partly from his own inclinations, partly 
in deference to the advice of Louis, who desired to secure an 
ally for Portugal, which had lately revolted from Spain, he 
chose Catharine of Braganza, a princess of Portugal, and 
received with her a vast sum of money as her dowry, with 
the fortress of Tangier, and the city of Bombay. At the 
same time, the alliance with Prance was cemented by the 
marriage of the princess Henrietta, who had been born at 


460 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. • 


[oh; 

a.d. Exeter, when the queen fled thither from Oxford, to Louis’s 

1G62. brother Philip, duke of Orleans. Catharine arrived in 
England in May, 1662, and for a day or two Charles pro¬ 
fessed himself highly delighted with her person, which was 
sufficiently pleasing, and with her manners, which were emi¬ 
nently agreeable; but he soon began to tire of a yoke to 
which he was not accustomed, to insult her by the introduc¬ 
tion of his mistress as a lady of her bed-chamber, and then to 
treat her with coldness and neglect. 

Charles was poor, and in debt; the expenses of his corona¬ 
tion, and of disbanding the army, had swallowed up the 
income of the first year of his reign ; and, though the parlia¬ 
ment perpetuated the excise, and invented a new tax of two 
shillings on each hearth in the kingdom, which they settled 
on him for life, the necessary expenditure could scarcely be 
kept down to a level with the revenue; and it was the 
opinion of the ablest financiers, that the people could bear no 
increase of taxation. The entire sum levied on the nation 
amounted to something less than 1,200,000/. a year; not much 
more than one-fiftieth part of the sum contributed with ease 
in the present year by the same people; so enormously have 
the resources of the nation increased in less than two centuries 
of free government. The population at the same time was 
about one-fourth of its present number; so that each indivi¬ 
dual contributed about one-twelfth of the sum that is now 
required of his posterity. Yet we may safely say, that, in spite 
of the increased imposts to which he is subject, the taxpayer 
has greatly advanced in general prosperity, and every kind 
of comfort; while the progress made in education, and in 
refinement of manners and feelings, is equally striking with 
the increase of opulence and luxury. 

Unfortunately, Charles was not inclined to practise the 
economy which his situation required. He was naturally 
thoughtless, his favourites were of more than usual rapacity, 
and though he himself was not of that generous temper that 
delights in volunteering presents to the objects of his affec¬ 
tion, he had an indolent love of ease which made him shrink 
from the trouble of refusing a request, however unreasonable. 
Louis, who was rich, generous, and politic, was not displeased 
to see his cousin in a condition which prevented his being 
formidable abroad, and made him dependent on others for 
the means of preserving his authority at home; he lent him 
a large sum of money, and offered to purchase Dunkirk, 




CHARLES II. 


461 


XLV.] 

which, as has been already mentioned, he had ceded to 
Cromwell, when it was first taken from the Spaniards. The 
town was of no use for any English object; the cost of de¬ 
fending it was very great, and the purchase-money ample; 
yet no transaction of the reign gave deeper or more general 
offence : it was looked upon as a mean bartering away of the 
advantages won for the kingdom by Cromwell; and as 
Clarendon was known to have advised it, the mob believed 
that his object was to enrich himself with a share of the 
price obtained for it, and gave the name of Dunkirk House 
to the mansion which he was building: near Piccadillv, on 
the spot where the Clarendon Hotel still preserves the 
memory of his prudent and beneficial administration. 

Clarendon had lost the good will of the people; he did not 
long preserve the favour of the king. He was not always 
faultless, but he was an honest and virtuous man, not well 
fitted for any court, and not at all for so profligate a society 
as that which now contaminated the royal palaces. He 
opposed all indulgences to the Roman* Catholics, whose 
religion Charles openly favoured, and, as is now well known, 
had already secretly espoused ; he disdained to pay court to 
the worthless women who surrounded the king; he refused 
to pander to the covetousness or to humour the still more 
odious vices of the male favourites. They found it easy to 
set the king against one whose grave dignity was a reproach, 
and whose advice w T as a bore to him. They mimicked his 
stately carriage, and his still more solemn language, and 
were rapidly paving the way for his disgrace, when the parlia¬ 
ment decided on war with Holland, and, for a time, domestic 
differences were forgotten in the preparation for a struggle 
with the only power that could dispute for a moment the 
empire of the sea with Great Britain. War was declared in 
February, 1665, and in June, the English fleet, under the 
duke of York, prince Rupert, and lord Sandwich, gave the 
Dutch fleet a decisive defeat. To the great surprise of 
Charles, France now made an alliance with Holland, but in 
a second engagement in 1666, which lasted four days, 
Rupert, with the duke of Albemarle for his colleague, 
beat off the united fleet of the enemy, which was greatly 
superior in numbers, and, a few weeks afterwards, again 
defeated them, followed them into the Scheldt, and burnt 
above 150 merchantmen. The next year Louis made peace 
with Charles, and negotiations with a similar object were 


A.D. 

1662— 

1665. 


1666. 


462 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a. d. commenced by England and Holland. In spite of the suc- 
1GG5 cessfnl issue of the last naval campaign, peace was necessary 
1607- p or as the poverty of the exchequer (partly caused 

by the money voted for the purposes of the war being 
diverted from that object to feed the rapacity of the courtiers) 
prevented the fleet from being maintained in an efficient 
state, and it was at this moment lying inactive and not half 
manned in the different harbours. Unfortunately, De Witt, 
at that time the chief magistrate of the Dutch republic, was 
aware of its weakness, and, burning to revenge the insult 
inflicted on his own coasts in the preceding year, he refused 
an armistice while the negotiations were pending, and led 
the Dutch fleet in person into the Thames. The duke of 
York had already pointed out the necessity of fortifying the 
banks of the river, and some works had been begun, which 
were still unfinished for want of money, and were in no con¬ 
dition to offer any effectual resistance to the advance of the 
enemy. At the first alarm Monk hastened to the Medway, 
threw a boom across that river, and sunk some vessels in 
the deepest part of the Thames ; but one of the largest 
Dutch ships broke the boom, the channel was found to be 
only partially filled up by the wrecks, and De Witt ad¬ 
vanced unopposed as far as Upnor, burning all the ships that 
lay in his path, some of which were among the finest vessels 
of the British navy; but, as he failed in his attempts upon 
Plymouth and Portsmouth, and as the Dutch began to be seri¬ 
ously alarmed at the progress which the French army under 
Turenne was making in Flanders, they also began to wish 
for peace, which was soon after concluded at Breda, on terms 
which left neither country any reason for dissatisfaction. 

But, during the progress of the war, important events had 
taken place at home. Algernon Sidney, who had always 
been an enthusiastic Bepublican, thought the hostility of 
Louis so favourable to his darling theory, that he applied to 
that monarch for aid, offering to excite an insurrection if 
Louis would support the republican party with a gift of 
100,000/. Louis offered 20,000/., and from this time forth 
continued his connexions with the disaffected party in Eng¬ 
land, even while he was also supplying Charles with large 
sums to render him independent of his people. 

The other occurrences to which I have alluded chiefly 
affected the metropolis. In the summer of 1665 the plague 
broke out in London with a virulence of which no country in 




CHARLES II. 


463 


XLV.] 

Western Europe had afforded any previous example. At first 
it attacked only the lower classes, hut it soon became 
more general, till the deaths rose in number to above 
1000 a day, and the panic became so universal that all, who 
had the power to do so, fled in consternation from the in¬ 
fected city. The court and the parliament removed to Ox¬ 
ford, and it was not till the return of the cold weather, 
which proved more effectual than the skill of the physicians, 
that the pestilence abated. The next autumn was signalized 
by a calamity of a different character. On the 3rd of 
September a fire broke out in a baker’s house near London 
Bridge, which for a while threatened to consume the whole 
city; it was fanned by a violent gale of wind, and for 
three days and nights it raged with incredible fury. The 
houses were built chiefly of wood, and this circumstance 
caused the conflagration to spread with a rapidity which we 
of the present day, accustomed to less combustible structures, 
can scarcely imagine; an eye-witness describes the blaze as 
so great, that for ten miles round the night was as light as the 
day. The king and the duke of York hastened to the scene, 
and afforded a salutary example of courage and personal ex¬ 
ertion. As the only means of arrestiug the progress of the 
flames gunpowder was used to blow up the houses which lav 
in the direction of their progress ; and by this expedient the 
fire was at last stopped ; but not till it had destroyed 13,000 
houses, 89 churches, and deprived 200,000 people of their 
property and of their homes. It was undoubtedly acci¬ 
dental, but for a long time it was believed to be the work of 
incendiaries, and, as the Boman Catholics were the chief ob¬ 
jects of the aversion of the populace, the guilt was generally 
imputed to them ; and the monument erected to commemo¬ 
rate the restoration of the city, long bore an inscription 
which affirmed that “ the burning of this Protestant city was 
begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the 
popish faction.” The statement was erased by king James, 
and restored by king William ; it has again been effaced in the 
time of the present generation, as the progress of enlighten¬ 
ment has taught even the bitterest fanatics that the cause 
which they wish to support is not served by adherence to 
a notorious falsehood, and that Christians of all denomina¬ 
tions, however differing on speculative points of theology, 
may equally be loyal subjects and virtuous citizens. 

The concurrence of these misfortunes, by causing great 


A.D. 

1GG5— 

1G67. 


464 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. distress, caused also great discontent; Clarendon, as the 
1GG5 chief minister, was the chief object of attack, and the 
universal shame felt at the recent triumph of the Dutch 
completed his ruin. The mob in their fury broke his 
windows, and painted a gibbet on his gate ; he had excited 
the indignation of the country party by vigorously though 
vainly opposing a foolish and unjust bill to prohibit the im¬ 
portation of Irish cattle or Irish provisions ; and had pro¬ 
voked the king by thwarting a still more iniquitous scheme 
of his own for divorcing his queen, of whom he was weary, 
and from whom he had ceased to expect an heir, in order to 
marry a young lady of great beauty, a Miss Stewart; his 
mistress, lady Castlemaine, the profligate courtiers, the almost 
more profligate politicians who hoped to rise by his fall, all 
used their utmost efforts to keep the king’s resentment alive, 
and to stimulate it to active measures ; and though Charles 
could not at first shake off his feelings of respect and at¬ 
tachment to one who had been his admirer from his youth, 
and who had given such ample proof of fidelity to his 
best interests, he yielded at last to the incessant energy of 
lady Castlemaine, and in August, 1667, sent a messenger to 
Clarendon to demand the surrender of the great seal. Dor 
a day or two Charles seemed disposed to proceed no further 
in his displeasure, but he soon began to feel his presence in 
the capital a reproach to him. This feeling was artfully taken 
advantage of by those who feared that there might still be 
a possibility of his restoration to favour, and who easily in¬ 
duced the ungrateful and heartless king first to consent to 
his impeachment, and then to urge it on with a steadiness of 
which, in a better cause, he never showed himself capable. 
The committee appointed by the commons to prepare the 
articles of accusation could devise none that were not so 
wholly preposterous that they were ashamed to detail them 
to the lords; accordingly they appeared at the bar of the 
upper house with an impeachment couched in general terms ; 
and, as the lords refused to consider such an indictment any 
ground for committing him, the two houses were on the 
verge of a very serious quarrel. While the discussion thus 
raised was proceeding, Clarendon endeavoured to propitiate 
Charles by a letter, asking for his mercy in very humble 
terms, to which he received no answer; and at last the king 
was excited to such animosity against him, that, as the house 
of peers seemed determined to defend him, he was induced 


CHARLES IT. 


465 


XLY. ] 

to consent to prorogue the parliament in order that the a.d. 
earl might be tried by the high steward and a small body of 107i7 ' 
peers selected for the purpose of ensuring his condemnation. 
Clarendon, who had before been advised to take such a step, 
now determined to fly from the malice of his enemies, and 
withdrew to France, where Louis assigned him Avignon for a 
residence. 

His relentless enemies were determined to prevent the 
possibility of his return, and, with the cordial sanction of the 
king, procured the passing of a bill, by which, unless he sur¬ 
rendered to take his trial before the 1st of February, 1668, 
he was banished for life; and, if he should ever return at a 
later period, be was to be subjected to all the penalties of 
high treason, and be held incapable of pardon without the 
consent of both houses of parliament. The news of this 
shameful bill reached him on his journey, and he would have 
at once returned to face his accusers, had he not been pre¬ 
vented by sudden and severe illness. His exile was not 
useless to posterity, since to the leisure thus afforded him 
wm owe the completion of his “ History of the Rebellion,” 
which he had commenced before the restoration, and winch, 
though unavoidably tinctured with partiality, is unrivalled 
for the discrimination of individual character which it dis¬ 
plays, and for the delicate touches of description with which 
it sets the principal actors in the scene before the reader. 

Twice did the aged earl entreat Charles to permit his return 
to his native land. The first time he met with a cold re¬ 
fusal, the second time he did not obtain any reply at all, 
and he died six years afterwards at Rouen. Though honest 
and conscientious, he had not always been a wise minister. 
Returning, after fourteen years’ absence from his native 
land, to become at once its practical ruler, he shut his eyes 
to the differences that time, and such a time, had wrought 
in the aspect of affairs; and, his feelings being embittered 
against the Presbyterians by the hardships which, in com¬ 
mon with the rest of Charles’s court, he had suffered in his 
exile, he was far more inclined to maintain the highest pre¬ 
tensions of the Church and the royal prerogative unimpaired 
than when he quitted England. Many, however, of the 
worst measures of the first years of the reign, such as the 
Dutch war, were adopted in defiance of his advice. The 
worthless character of the king added greatly to the diffi¬ 
culties which must have embarrassed even the wisest mi- 

H h 


466 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. n j s ter at such a time as that of his authority; and if we 
compare the events of his administration with those of the 
rest of the reign, though the task of governing the nation 
had been rendered far easier by his labours, we shall find 
grounds for estimating very highly the services which he 
rendered to his king and country, and which by both were 
most ungratefully reqliited. 

Clarendon’s fall made way for the ascendancy of some of 
the most unprincipled men who ever swayed the destinies of 
a great nation; the initials of their names, Clifford, Ashley, 
Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, were popularly 
formed into the word “ Cabal,” which since their time has 
become naturalized in the language 2 . The ablest of them 
was Ashley, known afterwards as lord Shaftesbury, a man 
of unsurpassed versatility, fertility of resource, address, and 
eloquence ; though he subsequently impaired his reputation 
by grasping at the office of chancellor, for which he had no 
qualification in the way of study or experience, and for 
which he showed the most complete unfitness. He was a 
man of very large fortune, which he came into at an early 
age*; and at the beginning of the civil war he exerted him¬ 
self vigorously and successfully on the side of the king, till 
he took offence because he conceived that his importance 
was undervalued, on which he went over to the parliament, 
showing great courage and some military skill in the opera¬ 
tions which were entrusted to his execution. Though the 
most profligate of men in his private life, he was appointed 
by Cromwell a member of the Barebone’s parliament, and 
equalled the most violent of the fanatics in the canting 
phraseology which they affected, and in their ardent repub¬ 
licanism ; but, as he refused to sign the declaration required 
by the protector from his second parliament, on the ground 
that the government of one person was against his con¬ 
science, he was excluded, and had the honour of being pro¬ 
nounced by Cromwell the most unmanageable man in the 
three kingdoms. On the death of Cromwell he foresaw the 
course that events were likely to take, and again became a 
Boyalist. In the debates which took place in the house of 
commons respecting the restoration of Charles he took the 
leading part, and, being supported by the influence of lord 
Southampton, whose daughter he had married, by one of 

2 The word “ cabal,” however, appears to have been in use some few years 
earlier. 


CHARLES If. 


467 


XLV.] 

the first acts of the restored king he was rasied to the 
peerage as lord Ashley. His father-in-law had died the 
preceding year. While he lived Ashley had forborne oppo¬ 
sition to the ministers; but, as soon as the tie that bound 
him to them was dissolved, he began to intrigue against 
Clarendon, and w T as one of the principal agents in his fall, on 
which he became chancellor of the exchequer, and practically 
the first minister of the crown. 

In personal influence with the king he was perhaps 
equalled by the duke of Buckingham, a man still more 
worthless than himself, as being wholly destitute of honour 
in private life, which Shaftesbury always preserved; and 
though clever and accomplished, possessed of no statesman¬ 
like ability; but endeared to Charles by having been the 
companion of his exile, the sharer in and encourager of his 
youthful excesses, and still by his lively wit and proficiency 
in the active amusements to which Charles was greatly ad¬ 
dicted. His ambition was so little bounded by his capacity, 
that, at the battle of Worcester, he had solicited the king 
to make him the commander-in-chief instead of Leslie. 
Since the restoration he had been constantly intriguing 
against Clarendon, and, by his mimicry and ridicule of him 
in the private parties of the court, had contributed greatly to 
lessen Charles’s respect and regard for him. He had no politi¬ 
cal office now, but he purchased the place of master of the 
horse of the duke of Albemarle, and, in virtue of that, was 
admitted to the most secret councils of the state, though 
still constantly intriguing against his colleagues, of whom he 
was jealous, and often even against the king himself. 

The others require no particular mention. Clifford was a 
bold and unscrupulous man, and a zealous Roman Catholic: 
Arlington was reputed a good man of business, but was timid 
in disposition, covetous, corrupt, and a hypocrite in re¬ 
ligion ; professing adherence to the Church of England, and 
being secretly a Roman Catholic: Lauderdale had every 
vice except such as are cheerful and attractive ; tyrannical 
to his inferiors, abject to those in power, faithless, ambi¬ 
tious, revengeful, and cruel, he preserved his influence with 
Charles by an unremitting compliance with all his worst 
passions and his most unconstitutional designs. 

Yet the first measure of these bad men was one of re¬ 
markable wisdom, and one that, had the policy which it 
seemed to indicate been sincerely embraced and persevered 

h h 2 


468 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. in, would have proved eminently beneficial to Europe. On 

16G!’. £] ie d ea th of Philip IY. of Spain, Louis XIV. set up a 
claim to the Spanish Netherlands, as having descended by 
inheritance to his queen, in preference to the new king, 
her half-brother by a second marriage; and, entering that 
country with a powerful army, speedily made himself master 
of some of its strongest fortresses. The Dutch were greatly 
alarmed at such progress made in their immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood by so unscrupulous a ruler as the French king, 
but saw no hope of arresting it, till sir William Temple, the 
British ambassador at the Hague, and a man of the most 
distinguished capacity and virtue, suggested to his court 
the project of an alliance with both Holland and Sweden, 
for the purpose of bridling the ambition of France. In 
their hearts, Charles and his ministers greatly preferred the 
alliance of France to that of Holland; but the feeling of 
the nation was very different. The nation hated the French, 
and was attached to the Dutch as enemies of the French, 
and also as brother Protestants. The parliament too showed 
no great confidence in the ministr} r , but had lately rejected 
a bill to secure toleration to the Nonconformists by a large 
majority; so, to conciliate the discontented, the treaty, as 
projected by Temple, was agreed to, and the triple alliance 
thus formed compelled Louis to agree to a peace on the 
terms of relinquishing a great portion of his recent acquisi¬ 
tions. 

The alliance and its immediate consequences gave uni¬ 
versal satisfaction; yet it was only a delusion practised on 
the people. At the very time that Temple was arranging 
its conditions Charles was proposing a clandestine treaty to 
Louis; and Clifford, the lord treasurer, suffered the secret 
resolution of the court to escape him, telling one of his ac¬ 
quaintances that, in spite of the exultation of the people, 
they would soon see another Dutch war. 

It is easy to prophesy truly when the accomplishment of 
the prediction depends upon oneself; but in this instance 
the ministers themselves did not know the whole of Charles’s 
designs. The duke of York had lately become a Boraau 
Catholic, as had his duchess, the daughter of Clarendon, 
who died about this time. The king also had embraced the 
same doctrines, though that fact was never revealed till his 
death. He was desirous, however, to publish it at the first 
favourable opportunity, and proposed to Louis to bring over 







CHARLES II. 


469 


XL'VI.] 

the whole English people to popery, and, as soon as that was a.d. 
accomplished, to join him in a war against Holland, with the — 
object of dividing that country between the two monarchs 
and his nephew, the young prince of Orange. To aid him 
in the execution of these plans he required from Louis a 
yearly contribution of 200,000Z., and 6000 French troops. 

Louis, whose treasury was rich, was willing to give the 
money, and probably still more willing to introduce so strong 
a force into England; but, as he was too shrewd to think 
the conversion of a whole nation like the English to a 
religion they detested as much as popery as easy a measure 
as it seemed to Charles, be desired that the subjugation of 
Holland should precede any attempt at the conversion of 
England. Charles adhered for a while to his own proposal, 
till Louis sent his sister, the duchess of Orleans, to Dover, 
to gain him over to his views; and, as Henrietta brought 
him a new mistress of great beauty, her arguments proved 
irresistible, and he consented to postpone the interests of 
his new religion to the wishes of his ally. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

CHARLES II. (continued). 

Lours was right, as the duke of York proved some years 
later to his cost, in supposing it no easy matter to bring the 
English again into subjection to the pope; but the difficul¬ 
ties of carrying out that portion of the treaty which he 
desired to have taken first were scarcely less, and were such 
as few princes but Charles would have been at once bold 
enough and base enough to grapple with. He pretended to 
the parliament that he had need of a large fleet to carry out 
the stipulations of the triple alliance, and to curb the 
aggressive spirit of Louis, and by this false pretence he 
obtained from them a grant of S00,000Z.; and then, as it 
was clear that that sum would last but a short time, and 
equally clear that the parliament, when aware of the deceit 
which had been practised upon it, would be in no humour to 
give any more, he proceeded, by the advice of Shaftesbury 
and Clifford, to refuse the repayment of the sums which the 
goldsmiths and bankers, as was usual, had advanced to the 
exchequer, and thus, at the expense of a serious derangement 
of the whole trade and commerce of the kingdom, of the 



470 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. extensive ruin of individuals, and of the violation of the good 
1669 faith of the state, he acquired an additional sum of 1,300,000^. 
' ' more. He was now sufficiently provided. Having cheated 
his subjects, it was not to be wondered at that he did not 
think himself bound to be more honest to his enemies, and, 
before issuing any declaration of war, he sent out a squadron 
to attack the Dutch Smyrna fleet, which was daily expected, 
and the value of which was estimated at a million and a half 
of money. The Dutch commanders, however, had had some 
warning of their danger, and, being prepared for an attack, 
beat off their assailants with but trifling loss; and then, in 
March, 1672, Charles and Louis declared war against them 
simultaneously. England’s share of the war was confined to 
three or four naval actions in this and the following year, 
in which the duke of York, as admiral, showed great intre¬ 
pidity, but which w r ere productive of no decisive results. 
But the Erench attack was of a more formidable character. 
One hundred thousand men under the prince de Conde, the 
most intrepid of assailants, and Turenne, the greatest 
general wffio, at that time, had ever been seen in Europe, 
overran half the country, and advanced almost to the gates 
of Amsterdam. The imminent danger divided instead of 
uniting the Dutch people. They broke out into terrible 
disorders, massacred their chief magistrate, De Witt, who 
had negotiated the triple alliance, and placed the young 
prince of Orange at the head of the government. To his 
unconquerable courage and patriotic firmness they owed 
their preservation. It was in vain that Charles and Louis 
endeavoured to seduce him by the offer of the absolute 
sovereignty of a portion of the country if he would acquiesce 
in their subjugation of the rest. His nobler ambition pre¬ 
ferred being the saviour of the whole to being the despotic 
master of a part. His spirited exhortations roused the 
whole people to a steady resistance, and to determine rather 
to flee, if need should arise, to their distant settlements in 
the furthest extremity of the globe, than to remain as 
slaves to the enemies of their religion and their freedom. 
In the number of their forces, and the skill of their generals, 
the Dutch were, of course, vastly inferior to the French; 
but they had a resource against invaders possessed by no 
other people in Europe. They opened their dikes, let the 
sea inundate the whole country, till it resembled one vast 
lake, with the cities rising out of it, like the hundred isles 


CHARLES II. 


471 


XL VI.] 

of V enice. The invaders were forced to retreat. The re¬ 
spite thus obtained gave time for negotiations to secure 
the aid of Austria and Spain; and, though the conditions 
demanded by Louis and Charles as the price of peace were 
at first such as would have laid the independence of Holland 
wholly at their mercy, they were compelled bit by bit to 
recede from them; and, in 1674, peace was concluded 
between England and Holland, in which, though the Dutch 
made some sacrifices, the English reaped no advantage at 
all commensurate with the exertions they had made for the 
prosecution of the war. 

Charles had been compelled to accede to this peace by 
the parliament, which he was forced to reassemble in order 
to obtain the necessary supplies. They highly disapproved 
of the war; but they were still more displeased at the 
toleration which had lately been given to the Eoman 
Catholics. The duke of York’s conversion to popery had 
been made public, though it was thought prudent to dis¬ 
guise the king’s adoption of the same doctrines; and, as 
a step towards the carrying out of the agreement secretly 
made with Louis, Charles had lately, by his own authority, 
issued a proclamation, suspending all the penal laws against 
every sort of recusants or Nonconformists. Though this 
declaration of indulgence, as it was called, affected the 
Protestant Dissenters equally with the Eoman Catholics, 
and though hitherto the severities exercised against the 
Protestant Dissenters had, as they were a very numerous 
body, produced very wide-spread discontent, the declaration 
set the whole kingdom in a ferment. The members of the 
Church of England looked on the toleration of any other 
sect as an injury done to themselves ; and the puritan party, 
like the envious man in the fable, detested the Eoman 
Catholics so much, that they would rather be persecuted as 
long as their enemies were also persecuted, than tolerated 
if their enemies were to enjoy the same indulgence. The 
house of commons largely shared in these sentiments, and, 
as soon as they had voted the necessary supplies, began to 
raise the question whether the king had the power to issue 
such a proclamation. It was admitted that he could dispense 
with penal statutes in favour of particular individuals, but 
(though this admission, if carried out logically to its ulti¬ 
mate conclusion, would have authorized every possible 
exercise of a similar authority) it was strenuously denied 


A.D. 

1673— 

1674. 


472 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. that he could dispense with a whole set of statutes against 
whole classes of persons. Shaftesbury, who had first sug- 
gested the measure, now, alarmed at the general outcry, 
turned round, pronounced it illegal, and it was cancelled; 
nor was the house contented with the triumph thus gained, 
but it proceeded to impose a test, which exacted the recep¬ 
tion of the sacrament according to the rites of the Church 
of England, and a formal denial of transubstantiation 
from all holders of office in the kingdom; and this law, 
which excluded Protestant Dissenters as well as Roman 
Catholics from office, continued in force till it was re¬ 
pealed in the time of the duke of Wellington’s ministry, at 
the end of the reign of Gfeorge IV. 

The dispensing power had grown up when the principles 
of liberty w r ere not understood, and when the people were 
not inclined to quarrel with any exertion of the prerogative 
which did not involve the personal oppression of any one ; 
but it was clearly incompatible with the precise limitations 
of authority requisite in a constitutional government, and 
was completely extinguished by the bill of rights. 

The test act deprived the duke of York of his office of 
admiral, and Clifford of the treasurer’s staff; and, having 
thus got rid of the most respectable member of the cabal, 
the opposition in the commons attacked the rest with in¬ 
creased vigour, and speedily drove them all from office, 
except Lauderdale, who retained the administration of the 
affairs of Scotland. Arlington and Clifford retired from 
political life, but Buckingham and Shaftesbury went into 
furious opposition. Shaftesbury in particular, finding that 
he had been deceived by the king, who had kept back from 
him his agreement with Louis to re-establish the Roman Ca¬ 
tholic religion, put himself forward as the chief supporter 
of the Protestant interest, lecturing the king on his favour 
to the popish faction, as he termed it, and openly opposing 
the marriage of the duke of York with Mary, princess of 
Modena. The arbitrary temper of the new lord treasurer, 
earl Danby, soon afforded him a more reasonable opening 
for attack, when he brought forward in the house of lords 
a bill, requiring every holder of office and every member 
of parliament to declare all resistance to the kingly power, 
and any attempt whatever to alter the government in 
Church or state, criminal. Against so monstrous a pro¬ 
posal it was not difficult to make a stand; and though 


CHARLES II. 


473 


XL VI.] 

Danby now introduced the practice of bribing members of a.b. 
parliament, and carried it to a great extent in both houses, 
the measure was only passed through the lords with great 
difficulty, and was suffered to drop without even being 
presented to the commons. 

In spite, however, of his zeal for the prerogative, Danby 
was not a favourite of the king; he was avowedly an enemy 
to the alliance with France, and was eager to commit the 
administration of foreign affairs to Temple, the negotiator 
of the triple alliance, and the firm friend of Holland. The 
idea of war with France w T as, as usual, popular; and in spite 
of the heroic resistance which the Dutch were still making 
to Louis, there appeared no other means to save Holland 
from becoming his prey. At the beginning of the year 1677 
the parliament presented an address to the king, begging 
him to form such alliances as, by saving Holland and the 
Netherlands, would thus quiet the fears of his people; and 
Charles, to whom promises never cost any thing, gave them 
a favourable answer, in which he demanded a supply to 
enable him to carry out their views, pledging his royal word 
that they should never repent reposing such confidence in 
him. At this very time lie was receiving a yearly pension 
from Louis to secure his neutrality. The parliament gave 
him a small sum, but refused him the larger supply that he 
demanded. To conciliate them further, he now, in spite of 
the reluctance of the duke of York, her father, gave his 
niece, the princess Mary, in marriage to the prince of Orange ; 
and sent an ambassador, though not such as the opposition 
would have chosen, to support the proposals for peace made 
by the Dutch in the treaty which was on the point of being 
concluded at Nimeguen. 

This conduct of his naturally made Louis distrustful of 1078. 
him, and unwilling to see the parliament furnish him with 
the means of being too powerful, lest that power should 
really be turned against France. To guard against this 
danger he began to intrigue with the leaders of the opposi¬ 
tion, or country party, as they were popularly called, and 
the general corruption of the age aided his views in a way 
that cannot be recorded or remembered by an Englishman 
without shame for the almost universal degeneracy of his 
countrymen. The favourite cry of the country party had 
long been war with France, yet the leaders of it did not 
scruple now to take bribes from the king of France to 


474 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. oppose the measures of their own sovereign ; only two of the 
if>78 party, lord Hollis and lord Russell, son of the earl of Bed- 
1G79. f orc ^ are f ree f rom the charge of pecuniary corruption, and 
even they afforded Louis their zealous co-operation, though 
they disdained to enrich themselves by their complaisance; 
the truth being that they and their fellow-plotters were as 
desirous as Louis could be to keep Charles weak: Louis, 
lest, if he became powerful, he might turn his arms against 
him ; they, lest he might employ them to crush their religion 
and their civil liberties. 

Louis was to the full as unscrupulous and faithless as 
Charles; and believing that Dauby would never cease to be 
his enemy, contrived to have the fact of his having been 
accessory to applications for money from France divulged to 
the commons. They prepared to impeach him; and, though 
the king dissolved the parliament in order to put a stop to 
such a proceeding, the general indignation against him as a 
tool of France would probably have led to serious disturb¬ 
ances, had not the popular attention been diverted from 
his delinquencies by one of the most singular events that 
ever disfigured the history of an enlightened nation. 

In the autumn of 1678 it began to be reported that a 
popish plot had been discovered, having no less an object 
than the murder of the king, of all the chief Protestants of 
the kingdom, and the entire re-establishment of the Roman 
Catholic religion. Shaftesbury has been accused of having 
invented the whole story, but it seems so incredible that he 
or any one could have foreseen the iniquitous absurdities 
into which so improbable a fiction excited the whole nation, 
that we may acquit him of that guilt, though, when others 
had devised the tale, he supported them with the whole of 
his power. A clergyman, named Titus Oates, a man of such, 
notorious infamy, that he had been expelled from a living, 
and deprived of a chaplaincy of the navy, laid informations 
of an extensive plot before sir Edmonsbury Godfrey, a 
Middlesex magistrate. According to this sworn evidence 
the duke of York’s confessor and the queen’s physician 
were both concerned in the plot; Charles was to be stabbed, 
to be poisoned, to be shot with silver bullets; the Jesuits 
had resolved that if he would not become R. C. (a Roman 
Catholic), he should no longer be C. R.; all the chief cities 
in England were to be burnt as London had been burnt two 
years before; even the duke of York, zealous papist as he 


CHARLES IT. 


475 


XLVI.] 

■was, was to be murdered, or, as Oates reported the language 
of the chief of the Jesuits, “ was to go to pot,” if he scrupled 
to approve of their actions, or to submit to their conditions. 

A day or two after Godfrey had received Oates’s deposi¬ 
tions, he was found murdered in the fields in the environs 
of London; and it was at once concluded that he had been 
murdered by the Jesuits in revenge for having listened to 
Oates’s evidence. No further testimony to its truth was 
required; he lay in state for some days, and was buried with 
extraordinary pomp as a martyr to Protestantism ; and then 
the whole nation busied themselves to find victims to be 
sacrificed to his shade. Oates’s revelations increased in 
horror and importance as he saw they obtained belief. As 
vipers are brought to life by the sun, his success brought 
out fresh swarms of informers; the chief of whom were Bedloe, 
Dugdale, and Tuberville, wretches, if possible, more infa¬ 
mous than Oates himself; and on their information hundreds 
and hundreds of loyal citizens, some of them among the 
noblest of the land, were brought to trial. For a while no 
one was acquitted; Scroggs, the chief justice, one of the 
worst men who ever polluted the bench, prompted the wit¬ 
nesses, browbeat the prisoners, and publicly thanked the 
juries that convicted them. Charles, though almost alone 
he had the sense from the first to disbelieve and in private 
to ridicule the whole story, had not the courage to stand 
between the popular madness and its prey; and, to his ever¬ 
lasting disgrace, consented to the execution of those whom 
he knew to be innocent. The only spark of feeling or prin¬ 
ciple that he showed, was in refusing to allow the queen 
herself to be involved in these atrocious accusations. Oates 
had dared to impute to her also acquaintance with the plot, 
but here Charles interposed. “They think,” said he, “that 
I want a new wife, but for all that I will not suffer an inno¬ 
cent woman to be abused.” To such a height did the delu¬ 
sion go, that his brother peers convicted lord Stafford, a 
nobleman of most unblemished character, of accession to it, 
while lord Bussell, generally a man of virtue and humanity, 
carried his rancour so far as to question the king’s right to 
remit the more inhuman parts of his punishment, and to 
sentence him to be merely beheaded; and in Ireland, the 
Boman Catholic primate of that kingdom, archbishop Plun- 
ket, was put to death on a similar accusation. 

Encouraged by the apparent inability of any one to resist 


A.D. 

1678 — 

1679. 


476 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. them, the Protestant party, as they called themselves, headed 
1678— foy Shaftesbury, now aimed at higher game, and proposed 
1681 ' to exclude the duke of York from the succession to the 
throne. The parliament, which had been lately dissolved, 
had deprived Roman Catholic peers of their seats in par¬ 
liament, and it was only by a majority of two that an 
exception was made in the duke’s favour. Charles per¬ 
suaded his brother to retire from the kingdom. Shaftesbury 
had reckoned upon the king not being unwilling to abandon 
James’s rights, by appearing to favour the claims of the 
duke of Monmouth, a natural son of the king, born before 
the restoration, a young man of great personal attractions 
and accomplishments, but possessed of no abilities whatever, 
and of no virtues except courtesy and humanity. These, 
however, had gained him an extensive popularity in Scot¬ 
land, where he had been lately sent to quell an insurrection, 
into which the more violent Covenanters had broken out, 
and wffiere he had performed the duty entrusted to him 
with considerable success. If Charles had consented to 
his claims being brought forward, Shaftesbury’s party was 
prepared to support Monmouth’s legitimacy with forged 
certificates; but Charles, on the contrary, for the satisfac¬ 
tion of his brother, made a public declaration of Mon¬ 
mouth’s illegitimacy. They then prevailed on the duchess 
of Portsmouth, the king’s favourite mistress, to use her 
influence against the duke, by leading her to hope that 
the kingdom might be settled on her eldest son; but on 
this one point Charles was firm. He personally canvassed 
members of parliament to oppose a bill which was brought 
in to exclude his brother from the throne, declaring that 
he would never consent to it, though he offered to sanc¬ 
tion considerable limitations on the power of his succes¬ 
sor, and to grant any concessions necessary to pro¬ 
vide for the security of the Established Church. James 
himself would hear of no limitations; and, relying on the 
support of the English Homan Catholics, and of the epis¬ 
copal party in Scotland, whom he believed to be attached 
to himself, he began to talk to the French ambassador of 
resisting by force any attempts to deprive him of power; 
but colonel Churchill, the same officer who afterwards im¬ 
mortalized the name of Marlborough by services such as 
no subject at that time had ever equalled, and who had 
already obtained considerable influence over his mind, 


CHARLES IT. 


477 


XLYT.] 

pointed out so plainly the impossibility that such a plan 
could succeed that it was abandoned, and the duke was 
forced to submit, and to trust to his brother’s affection, 
and to circumstances. The prince of Orange was very 
desirous to see the exclusion bill passed, thinking that it 
would lead to the power being vested in his wife, or in 
himself; and Fagell, the Dutch minister, sent the king an 
earnest memorial from the states of Holland in favour of 
the measure, though William afterwards assured Charles 
that he had only sanctioned the presentation of such a 
memorial, because he thought that though the passing such 
a bill would quiet the nation for the time, it would ulti¬ 
mately be inoperative, and that he had never had a real 
purpose of attacking the rights of his own father-in-law. 
Charles had too much shrewdness to believe, and too much 
civility to appear to disbelieve him, but he was well aware 
of his real views ; remembering that when a little while before 
he had suggested to the prince a scheme for establishing a 
regency after his own death, with the princess Mary as 
regent, William had discountenanced it, because no power 
was offered to himself. The bill was keenly contested in 
more than one parliament. In 1680 it passed the commons, 
but was rejected by the house of lords, chiefly in conse¬ 
quence of a speech by lord Halifax, displaying unrivalled 
eloquence and power of argument. After that parliament 
was dissolved, a similar bill was brought forward in 1681; 
and the commons insisted so strongly on carrying it, that 
Charles had no resource but another dissolution, and no 
other parliament was assembled during his reign. 

. While this struggle was proceeding, the king, by the 
advice of sir W. Temple, had endeavoured to introduce a 
new principle into the government, giving the privy council 
a determinate character and position, and making it consist 
of thirty members ; fifteen of whom were to be ministers, 
or great legal or ecclesiastical functionaries, while fifteen 
were to be men vested with no office, independent repre¬ 
sentatives, as it were, of the nation at large; but the plan, 
however ingenious, would not work with such a sovereign 
as Charles. In spite of his promise to be guided by the 
council in all things, he continually acted in defiance of 
their advice, the independent members gradually desisted 
from their attendance, and the council fell to pieces before 
the end of the year. 


A.D. 

1678 — 

1682 . 


478 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. There had, however, been introduced into the council 
1678— two men, who continued the chief ministers till the end of 
the reign, the earl of Sunderland, secretary of state, and 
the marquis of Halifax, lord privy seal: Sunderland, an 
able man, but perfidious, cruel, and servile, destitute of all 
religion, but endowed with such fascination of manners 
and such address as to obtain an ascendancy over the minds 
even of those who most distrusted or most despised him; 
Halifax, a man of far loftier talents, and of most eminent 
virtues, but of an enlightened wisdom and humanity in 
advance of his age, disapproving equally of the violence of 
both parties, and often attempting, though in vain, to save 
the victims of each. Such a man was hardly calculated to 
be a sharer in any ministry at such a time; nor, indeed, 
could he have been so at all, bad the present system pre¬ 
vailed, by which every member of a cabinet is responsible 
for every act of that cabinet; but in those days no one 
was expected to concern himself with any thing beyond 
the business of his own department; no one was conceived 
to have the slightest power to control, or the slightest right 
to object to the acts of his colleagues. 

It was about this time that the names of Whig and Tory 
first began to be used to distinguish the two rival partisans 
in the state. As the term Whig, the origin of which 
has been already explained, was derived from Scotland, so 
that of Tory came from Ireland, where it was given to the 
Papists, who took shelter in the bogs from the severity of 
the laws. From them it was borrowed to stigmatize the 
friends of Papists, especially such as objected to exclude 
a popish successor from the throne; and, by an easy grada¬ 
tion, came at last to be applied to all those whose first 
principle in politics was to uphold the prerogatives and the 
dignity of the crown. 

Scotland had been for many years in a disturbed state. 
The restoration of episcopacy had kindled a spirit of re¬ 
sistance all over that country, which, in 1668, had broken 
out into open insurrection. That outbreak had been quickly 
put down, but Lauderdale, who was sent down to regulate 
affairs, though he stifled opposition for a while, did, in 
reality, by his needless cruelty, engender a far more resolute 
feeling of opposition, which broke out ten years later. 
Archbishop Sharp, a prelate utterly unworthy of his high 
position, had made himself greatly detested by his severity 


CHARLES II. 


479 


XL VI.] 

towards the Nonconformists. At last, in 1679, they 
murdered him, and again took arms. Colonel Graham, an 
officer of brilliant talents and high honour, but too vehe¬ 
ment a partisan of the prerogative to be as merciful as 
reason and indeed policy also required towards men so 
conscientiously resolute, was repulsed at first by the in¬ 
surgents, who could not be subdued till Monmouth arrived 
at the head of a powerful reinforcement, routed them at 
Bothwell Bridge, and treated them, when defeated, with a 
humanity which promised better results than Claverhouse’s 
severity, or the wanton cruelty of Lauderdale; but the 
next year the duke of York went to Scotland to take the 
government there upon himself, and renewed all the severi¬ 
ties of Lauderdale. On a most trumpery accusation of 
treason Argyle, the head of the presbyterian party, was 
convicted ; and, though the sentence of death pronounced 
against him was not executed, his estates were confiscated, 
and he was forced to make his escape to Holland. Vast 
numbers of Covenanters were outlawed. Many were hanged 
for refusing to declare the death of archbishop Sharp to 
be murder; and, at last, the w r hole country was placed 
under martial law; and the officers in command of the 
troops studied, not unsuccessfully, to rival the iniquities of 
the civil judges. 

While the duke was thus making the king’s government 
detested in Scotland, Sunderland was allowed to pursue a 
somewhat similar course in England. The violent conduct 
of Shaftesbury and the Whigs in pressing the exclusion 
bill, had produced a temporary reaction in Charles’s favour, 
and the unpopularity under which he had long laboured 
among the upper and middle classes was exchanged for 
feelings of returning loyalty and confidence. Sunderland 
thought he might venture to avail himself of this state of 
things to chastise the Whigs for their late violence in the 
conduct of the bill, and began a series of prosecutions 
remarkable for the illegal measures taken to ensure con¬ 
victions. The first victim was a carpenter and joiner, 
named College, a noisy and illiterate demagogue. He was 
prosecuted on the charge of having planned an attack on 
the king’s guards. The written instructions which he gave 
to his counsel were taken from him, in order to learn the 
grounds of his defence, and used as evidence against him; 
yet the grand jury threw out the indictment. He was 


A.D. 

1678 — 

1682 . 


480 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. removed to Oxford, where a more complaisant jury was found, 
1682 — convicted and executed. An indictment against Shaftesbury 
was also thrown out by the grand jury; and as the sheriffs 
of London could not be terrified into impanelling juries 
subservient to the court, it was determined to deprive the 
city of its charter. It was not difficult to find some irre¬ 
gularities of which the corporation had been guilty. The 
judges of the Court of King’s Bench decided that they 
were of such a character that the charter was forfeited. 
The precedent was made use of against other towns in which 
"Whig influence predominated, and borough after borough, 
on pretences of this kind, was stripped of its ancient fran¬ 
chises and privileges. 

These iniquities again produced a deep feeling of discontent, 
which was increased by the return of the duke of York to 
England, and his resumption of the administration of the 
navy; and which soon broke out in a formidable conspiracy. 
Some of the most violent of the Whigs formed a plot to raise 
the nation in arms against the government; on which plot 
a lower class of conspirators engrafted another, which had 
for its object the assassination of the king and duke of 
York. The first plot was rash and impracticable ; the second 
was very nearly meeting with success; its chiefs were, 
Eerguson, a man grown old in plots and treasons, and 
colonel Rumsey, a distinguished officer, but a frantic Re¬ 
publican. They concerted a plan with a maltster named 
Rumbold, who had a farm called the Rye House, on the 
road from Newmarket to London, near which it was agreed 
to stop the king on his way from the races, by upsetting a 
cart in the road, and to shoot him and the duke. The 
plot was well laid, and was only defeated by the accident of 
the house in which the king lodged at Newmarket being 
burnt, and by the king, in consequence, returning to London 
earlier than he had intended. 

Before the scheme could be revived, both plots were be¬ 
trayed ; and it was found that Shaftesbury, Monmouth, 
Russell, and Algernon Sidney had been among the leaders; 
and lord Essex was also implicated, though he had but lately 
been a lord of the treasury. Shaftesbury fled to Holland, 
where he soon after died. Monmouth threw himself on his 
father’s mercy, and was pardoned. Against the others it 
was determined to proceed; not indeed on the charge of 
having conspired the death of the king, but on that of a 


CHARLES II. 


4S1 


XL VI.] 

treasonable project of raising an insurrection. Essex killed 
himself in the Tower; the others were tried separately. 
It seems probable that they were guilty; but it is certain 
that it was not proved against them by such a weight of 
evidence as is required by the law of high treason. The 
most criminal acts alleged against lord Russell were proved 
only by a single witness, while the law requires two; and 
had not the jury been carefully packed by the new sheriffs, 
who had been illegally thrust into office for that purpose, he 
would have been acquitted. His fate has become especially 
famous from the heroic fortitude displayed by his wife, a 
daughter of lord Southampton, who assisted him at his trial, 
took notes of the evidence, exerted all her influence to pro¬ 
cure his pardon, and, when all hope was over, forbore to in¬ 
crease his troubles by a sight of her own affliction, but took 
leave of him with a composed resignation, and cherished his 
memory through a long life with a sorrowful but unchanging 
affection. 

Sidney, who had always been a violent Republican, was 
perhaps more deeply implicated in these conspiracies than 
Russell; but the evidence against him was even more de¬ 
fective. Jefferies, soon about to render himself for ever 
infamous, had just been made chief justice, and ex¬ 
erted himself to reward those to whom he owed his promo¬ 
tion, by the utmost unfairness towards the prisoner. He 
too was convicted and executed, but though the illegal 
means by which his conviction was procured have often 
caused him to be held up by a party as a martyr to the 
liberties of the people, there can be no doubt that he was 
a thoroughly bad subject; he had been bribed by the French 
king, he had been a chief promoter of the mischievous in¬ 
trigues with the .French ambassador, and had constantly 
supported all the schemes of Louis both here and in the 
Netherlands. 

The violence of these measures, the open contempt of law 
displayed in them, and in the duke of York’s return to 
office, alarmed lord Halifax, who tried in vain to inspire 
Charles with ideas of government more in harmony with the 
constitution ; but he had lately got a new adviser, in the 
second son of the late lord Clarendon, whom he had created 
earl of Rochester, and made first lord of the treasury, and who 
was quite as zealous in inculcating on him the notion of his 
right to unlimited power, as Halifax could be in persuading 

i i 


A.D. 

1682 — 

1G84. 


482 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. him to acquiesce in its constitutional limitations. It was in. 

1684 va i n that Halifax pressed the king to summon a parliament, as 
he was hound to do by law, since more than three years had 
elapsed since the dissolution of the last, to break his league 
with Louis, and to revive the alliance with Holland. Roches¬ 
ter, supported by his brother-in-law, the duke of York, coun¬ 
teracted all his wholesome counsels; and though it was 
impossible to retain him at the treasury, as it was proved 
that a large sum had been lost to the nation by his mis¬ 
management or dishonesty, he was only transferred to the 
presidency of the council, at that time considered a more 
important office ; so that, as Halifax said, while bad servants 
were generally kicked down stairs, he was the first instance 
on record of one being kicked up stairs; and he was suc¬ 
ceeded at the treasury by lord Godolphin, a man of moderate 
talents, but of great prudence and address, who, in subse¬ 
quent reigns, became a very important person in the state. 

Yet, in the last months of his life, Charles was inclined 
to follow Halifax’s advice. Louis having made himself 
master of Strasburg and Luxembourg, and having, therefore, 
no further need of Charles’s alliance, discontinued the yearly 
payments which he had so long made to him; and Charles 
was not only very indignant at his desertion of him, but 
was also thrown by it into great difficulties for want of 
money. He was likewise greatly annoyed at seeing that the 
unpopularity of the duke of York was in some degree reflected 
on himself, so that he, who, in spite of all the faults of his 
private life and of his government, had always been the idol 
of the populace, was now greeted in public with less 
cordiality than formerly; and it is not impossible that 
these considerations might have led to a change in his 
policy, when, on the 2nd of February, 1085, he was attacked 
by apoplexy, from which he recovered sufficiently to be 
formally admitted into the Roman Catholic Church, of which 
he had long been a secret member, but which proved fatal 
on the 6th, when, after four days of great suffering, borne 
with unexpected fortitude, he died at Whitehall, in the 
fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth after his 
restoration. 

Ho man endowed with so much natural ability, and so 
void of any disposition to tyranny or cruelty, ever made so 
bad a king as Charles II. Besides wit and sprightliness in 
conversation, he had great shrewdness, penetration into 


XLVI.] CHARLES II. 483 

character, and, in the opinion of those who were best ac- a.d. 
quainted with him, very eminent talents for business ; but 1685 * 
these great natural gifts w T ere so completely buried under 
the indolence of selfish voluptuousness as to be useless both 
to himself and to his people ; and that same indolence 
led him, in spite of the good nature and humanity of his 
disposition, to acquiesce in the shameful cruelties practised 
by his ministers in Scotland, and in a long series of judicial 
murders in England perpetrated on those whom he not 
only knew to be innocent, but who had no other crime laid 
to their charge but that of adherence to a religion in which , / 
he himself secretly believed. It may be questioned whether 
his submitting to become a pensioner of the Erench king, 
and uniting with him in a conspiracy against the religion 
and liberties of his subjects, is not a crime of still deeper 
dye in the sovereign of an independent state. His pro¬ 
digality to worthless favourites so exhausted the treasures 
that ought to have been applied to the service of the state, 
that an enemy of inferior power sailed up the Thames, insulted 
our harbours, and threatened the capital; and England, 
which, in the time of the protector, had been the arbitress 
of Europe, lost all weight in the affairs of the Continent, 
and was openly despised and trampled on by her only ally. 

In his private life Charles was as profligate as in his 
public life ; setting an open example of vice and debauchery 
to his subjects, which they were only too ready to follow, so 
that his reign is still a by-word for shameless indecency. 
Against vices so great and so various easy good humour and 
affability to his inferiors, the only virtues attributed to him, 
are but a poor set-off. Some allowance may be made for 
him, if we consider the precarious fortunes, and, for a prince, 
unparalleled difficulties of his early life, which may, to some 
extent, dispose us to mingle pity with our censure, but 
which can never prevent us from condemning his reign as 
dishonourable and calamitous, and himself as utterly regard¬ 
less of the interests, and unworthy of the affection of his 
people. 


i i 2 


A.D. 

1685. 

f 


484 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 

JAMES II. 


Emperor. 

Leopold. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


France. 
Louis XIV. 

Spain. 
Charles II. 


Pope. 
Innocent XI. 


Within an hour after the death of Charles, the privy coun¬ 
cil assembled at the palace, where the new king, in a brief 
speech, vindicated himself from the suspicion of being de¬ 
sirous of arbitrary power; and, praising the constant loyalty 
of the Church of England, promised steadily to maintain the 
established government both in Church and state. His 
partisans w'ere delighted at his language, proclaiming every 
where, as his morose temper and the unyielding rigour of 
his disposition had created a mistaken belief in his sincerity, 
that the nation had now full security for the preservation of 
all its rights, in the promises of a king who had never broken 
his word. He soon undeceived them; he came to the throne 
with the fixed resolution of making his power absolute, and 
of re-establishing the Roman Catholic religion; and every 
step taken by him was soon seen to have reference alone to 
these primary objects of his policy. 

The duke of Ormond, who had long governed Ireland 
with fidelity, ability, and eminent success, but whose firm 
adherence to the principles of the constitution and to the 
Protestant religion were equally well known, was recalled, 
and treated with marked disrespect by the king and his 
ministers. Halifax, though the rejection of the exclusion 
bill in the preceding reign had been mainly owing to his 
eloquence, because he had distinguished himself at other times 
as a firm opponent of arbitrary power, w r as removed from 
the privy seal to a less influential office, on purpose to 
mark the slight esteem in which he was held by the king. 
All authority was placed in the hands of Sunderland, the 
most unprincipled of men, and of Rochester, the constant 
advocate of intolerance and absolutism; while James accepted, 
with tears in his eyes, and with the most abject protestations 
of gratitude and subservience, a large present of money 
from Louis, whose tyrannical disposition and open contempt 
for good faith and religious liberty had been lately shown 




XLVII.] JAMES II. 485 

by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and by the 
cruelties practised on all the adherents of the reformed 
religion. 

These indications of the future spirit of the government 
were followed up, and in some instances anticipated, by 
conduct in direct violation of the established laws. The 
revenue had expired with the life of the late king, but 
James, by the advice of Jefferies, issued a proclamation 
commanding the taxes to be levied as usual; thus at once 
reverting to the most illegal of his father’s acts, which first 
provoked an active resistance to his authority. His next 
measures were still more offensive to the general feelings 
of the community. On the very first Sunday after his 
accession, he went publicly with all the ensigns of royalty to 
hear mass, and ordered the doors of the chapel to be thrown 
wide open that all who chose might see him engaged in an 
act of worship declared illegal by laws passed in the late 
reign. At the coronation, which took place on St. George’s 
day, though performed by a Protestant archbishop, all the 
portions of the service most at variance with the rites of 
popery were omitted; and persons were admitted both to 
military and civil offices without taking the tests which 
had been enacted as indispensable to qualify them for such 
preferment. 

Yet, in spite of these arbitrary and illegal proceedings, 
the parliament, which assembled at the beginning of the 
summer, was as compliant as if there had been nothing in 
them to awaken either resentment or suspicion. They 
voted him for life a revenue of 2,000,000/., a sum larger 
than had been conferred on any former sovereign. After 
the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion they granted him 
a large addition to this revenue, expressly for the support of 
a standing army ; and passed a law that any one moving in 
either house of parliament to alter the descent of the crown 
should be deemed guilty of high treason. In two matters 
only did they resist the king’s wishes; they refused to modify 
the* test act, and the habeas corpus act, passed in the late 
reign, the only safeguard of the subject against arbitrary 
imprisonment. The Scottish estates were equally submis¬ 
sive ; they also settled on him for life an income larger than 
that which had been enjoyed by his predecessors, and espe¬ 
cially consulted his bigoted hatred to Nonconformists by 
making it a capital offence to preach in a conventicle, or to 


A.D. 

1G85. 






HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


486 



a.d. attend any ministration in the open air, such as were so 
16 *oo. jjjugh i n uge i n country. 

James had gratified his feelings of religion and revenge at 
the same time, by having Oates and Dangerfield brought to 
trial for their manifold perjuries committed in the prose¬ 
cutions for the popish plot, and in causing sentences of 
unprecedented severity to be passed upon them. They 
were pilloried, flogged through the whole extent of London, 
and imprisoned for life. Dangerfield died; but Oates, 
whose death was, no doubt, also intended to be the con¬ 
sequence of his punishment, survived to receive a pardon 
and a pension from king William. A bill was also brought 
into parliament to revenge the attainder of lord Stafford, 
but was interrupted by the rebellion of Monmouth, which 
turned the attention of both houses to the present defence 
of the monarchy. 

The duke of Monmouth was in Holland, to which country 
he had retired after the discovery of the Bye House plot; 
lord Grey and others, who had thought it concerned their 
safety to place the Channel between themselves and the dis¬ 
pleasure of their sovereign, had sought the same asylum, 
as had several of the Scotch Nonconformists, the earl of 
Argyle, Fletcher of Saltoun, a man of great and varied 
ability, and many others of inferior influence, talents, or 
celebrity. Many of them had looked forward to the death 
of Charles as the termination of their exile, but when James 
succeeded to the crown without opposition, they naturally 
looked on their prospects as impaired rather than benefited 
by the change of rulers, and confessed to themselves that 
they had no hope unless he could be cast down from the 
throne. With these feelings they sought to awaken the 
ambition of Monmouth, whose former aspirations had been 
no secret, and, with exaggerated statements of his own 
popularity, of their influence, and of the general apprehen¬ 
sion caused by James’s accession, urged him to revive his 
pretensions, and to prepare to assert them by force. Mon¬ 
mouth, though but little inclined to, or calculated to succeed 
in, so daring an enterprise, had not the firmness to refuse their 
solicitations, and began to prepare for the expedition ; ships, 
which lay at Amsterdam, were hired to convey the exiles 
across with arms, ammunition, and provisions sufficient to 
equip the forces by which they expected to be joined. It 
was determined to divide the invasion. Argyle was to land 


XLVII.] JAMES II. 4S7 

ill Scotland, where his influence was pre-eminent above that 
of every other noble; and Monmouth was to make a descent 
upon England. James had received some intelligence of 
what was preparing against him, which he communicated to 
the Dutch ambassador, demanding that their country should 
not furnish aid to his enemies. The ambassador undertook 
that every exertion should be made in Holland to prevent 
an expedition sailing from the Dutch ports ; but, neverthe¬ 
less, both expeditions did sail; the fact apparently being 
that the prince of Orange, for a twofold reason, was willing 
to connive at them. If Monmouth failed, as his acuteness 
must have made him inclined to expect, a dangerous rival 
would be removed from his path, if ever another opportunity for 
unseating James should offer itself: if Monmouth succeeded, 
his light, unstable character, and want of capacity made it 
very improbable that he would be able to maintain himself 
on the throne ; and, in such a case, William, would find it 
easier to overthrow Monmouth than James. Early in May 
Argyle landed in the Highlands : he was opposed by but a 
small force; but his followers were divided by dissensions, 
and at last dispersed without daring to strike one blow for 
the cause for which they had thus invaded a powerful king¬ 
dom. He himself was taken prisoner, and executed under 
the sentence passed upon him some years before. 

It was nearly the middle of June when Monmouth landed 
at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, and announced the purpose of his 
landing in a declaration charging upon James personally 
all the crimes with which the perjury of some and the cre¬ 
dulity of others had ever loaded the Roman Catholics; pro¬ 
mising all the reforms which had ever been desired by the 
wildest enthusiasts, and declaring his own legitimacy, and, 
as a natural consequence, his right to the sovereignty of 
Great Britain, which, however, he promised not to assume 
till a free parliament had decided in favour of his preten¬ 
sions. He had selected the western counties for his land¬ 
ing because in that district he was well known, and had 
enjoyed great popularity in a progress which he had made 
some years before, which was not yet forgotten by the com¬ 
mon people. The higher classes feared to join him, but 
the populace flocked in numbers to his standard, and in a 
few days he found himself at the head of a force, respectable 
in point of numbers, but without experience or discipline ; 
indeed, the want of this last quality soon lost him the ser- 


A.D. 

1685. 


A.D. 

1685. 


488 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

vices of the ablest of his followers. A yeoman of the name 
of Dare, a man of influence in the district, behaved with 
such violence to Dietcher of Saltoun, that Fletcher shot him 
on the spot; and, as his comrades cried out for vengeance, 
Fletcher was forced to quit Monmouth’s camp to return to 
the Continent. 

The government was not idle ; but as soon as the news 
of Monmouth’s landing reached London, they sent troops of 
all kinds to check his progress. The lord-lieutenants called 
out the militia, the trainbands were put under arms, the 
regular regiments which were in Holland and Scotland were 
summoned to the capital to defend the state, and those 
which were in London or the neighbourhood were at once 
marched to the west, under lord Feversham, with Churchill, 
now a peer, as his second in command. At the same time 
the parliament passed a bill of attainder against Monmouth, 
and offered a large reward for his apprehension. After one 
or tw T o skirmishes of no importance, except to show the 
military inefficiency of Monmouth’s recruits, and many 
marches and countermarches, on the 5th of July the two 
armies came in sight of one another on the plain of Sedge- 
moor, near Bridgewater. Before this Monmouth had 
yielded to the entreaties of the majority of his followers, 
had allowed himself to be proclaimed king, and had been pre¬ 
sented with a royal standard embroidered for him by a party 
of young girls, enthusiasts in his cause, which now floated 
proudly in the centre of his army. Feversham and Churchill 
had about 4000 men, he himself about 6000; and, having 
found that the inferiority of his troops in skill and discipline 
more than counterbalanced their superiority in numbers, he 
endeavoured to equalize the chances of battle by the sur¬ 
prise of a night attack ; but the sentinels were on the alert, 
the surprise failed ; Churchill, on whom the chief part of 
. the duty as commander fell, encountered his assailants with 
consummate coolness and skill; and, though Monmouth’s 
raw forces fought better than could have been expected, 
they were totally routed. For a time Monmouth fought 
gallantly on foot at the head of his men; but, as soon as he 
saw that all hope of victory was over, he mounted a horse 
and fled from the field. He was vigorously pursued as he 
hastened towards the southern coast, and after some days 
was discovered hiding in a ditch near Cranbourne Chase. 
He now sought in vain to make his peace with the king: 


JAMES II. 


489 


XL VII.] 

James never forgave, and Monmouth’s offences had no title a.d. 
to forgiveness. He wrote submissive letters, throwing the 1(j85 - 
blame on those who had, as he said, persuaded him against 
his will to embark in his late enterprise. James exulted in 
the meanness and abasement of his enemy; but disgraced 
himself by having him brought bound into his presence to 
reproach and insult him. A trial was not needed, as the 
parliamentary attainder was sufficient for his execution, and, 
on the 15th of July, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. 

He had merited his fate; but the cruelties inflicted upon 
his supporters have left an indelible stain on the memory of 
the king: rendered deeper, if possible, by the base motives 
in obedience to which the most powerful, and therefore the 
most guilty of the rebels, were spared. Those who could 
purchase pardons by money, such as lord Grey, and Coch¬ 
rane, the son of lord Dundonald, were allowed to do so: 
others, such as Ferguson and Goodenough, secured impu¬ 
nity by the betrayal of their associates; but for those who 
had neither money nor information to give, there was no 
mercy. In the moment of victory Feversham had butchered 
scores of his prisoners in cold blood; and colonel Kirke, who 
was left in command at Bridgewater, when he and Churchill 
returned to London, continued for some weeks the practice 
of every imaginable atrocity at the expense of the luckless 
inhabitants of the disloyal county. Kirke had for some 
years been governor of Tangier, and the savage inhumanity 
which he had learned among the barbarians of Africa, was 
now afforded its fullest exercise among his own countrymen. 

Even his barbarity, however, was thrown in the shade when, 
in September, sir George Jefferies began to hold the assizes 
in the devoted district. We will pass over the details of 
the horrid butchery committed by the most infamous judge 
who ever polluted the judicial ermine in this circuit, long 
known qs the bloody assize. He boasted himself that he 
had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together 
since the Conquest: to make up the number even a lady 
was put to death, for sheltering men who bad fled from the 
battle, of which she had not even heard when she received 
them. Above 300 were hanged in the space of a month; 
nearly 1000 more were transported as slaves to the West 
Indies; the little girls who had embroidered Monmouth’s 
banner were only rescued from his vengeance by the pay¬ 
ment of a heavy fine to the queen’s maids of honour; who, 


490 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. as well as their mistress, were allowed to make a lucrative 
1085 traffic out of the sufferings or apprehensions of the convicted 
rebels ; Mary herself obtaining a grant of a hundred of those 
who had been sentenced to transportation, and selling them as 
slaves to the planters. When his bloody work was done Jef- 
feries returned in triumph to London, where he was received 
by the king with the most exulting cordiality, and rewarded 
with a peerage and the office of lord chancellor of England. 

In James’s opinion he was so much strengthened by the 
disastrous issue of this rebellion, that he might venture to 
proceed more openly in his darling projects in favour of 
popery. When the parliament reassembled in November, 
he avowed that he had employed several officers who had 
not taken the tests required by law, and that he was resolved 
not to dismiss them; and as, though they were willing to 
protect the officers alluded to from the penalties which they 
had already incurred, neither house was inclined to sanction 
their continuance in their employments, he prorogued 
them in great anger before they had sat a fortnight, though 
by doing so he lost a grant of 700,000/., which the commons 
were preparing to grant him, in order to keep a small force 
of regular troops on foot till the militia could be remodelled. 

Sunderland had secretly adopted the king’s religion, and 
in consequence had now a predominant influence at court; 
and at his suggestion a secret council was established, con¬ 
sisting of seven members, afterwards reduced in practice to 
three; namely, the king, Sunderland himself, and father 
Petre, the queen’s confessor, to concert measures for the 
promotion of the Homan Catholic religion: and the first 
step taken was designed to establish by judicial sentence 
the king’s power to dispense with the religious tests enacted 
in the late reign. The bench of judges was carefully packed, 
all those being removed who were suspected of being adverse 
to the authority claimed by the king, and then a fictitious 
action was brought against a Roman Catholic officer, named 
Hales, for holding a commission without having qualified 
himself by taking the test. Hales pleaded a dispensation 
from the king, and the judges, by a majority of eleven to 
one, pronounced his plea valid; but this judicial confirma¬ 
tion of such an exercise of the prerogative only increased 
the popular discontent, as it clearly increased the difficulty 
of resisting the power thus put forth, and as it was plain 
that all the rights claimed by the people rested on the same 


XLVII.] JAMES II. 491 

foundation as the law which was thus dispensed with; and 
that if the king could dispense with one law, he could dis¬ 
pense with every law ever enacted. It was evident even to 
James’s dull understanding and arbitrary disposition, that 
it would not be safe to provoke inquiry into the reality of 
the dispensing power by too frequent an exercise of it; so 
he began to canvass those who were likely to be members 
of a future parliament to consent to the repeal of the tests: 
to his disappointment he met with refusals even from the 
men who, as he fancied, had the least sense of religion, and 
the greatest desire for the favours of the court. He then 
thought that it might be easier, as a preliminary step, to con¬ 
vert some of them to his own religion, when their willingness 
to abolish the tests would follow as a matter of course; but 
he abandoned that design in consequence of a reply which he 
received from Kirke, to whom he had addressed his argu¬ 
ments as to one not likely to be troubled with the scruples 
of too delicate a conscience, but who now excused himself 
from complying with the king’s wishes on the ground that 
he had promised the emperor of Morocco, if ever he changed 
his religion, to turn Mahometan. 

In Ireland, where lord Clarendon was lord-lieutenant, he 
had better fortune, though the violence of lord Tyrconnel, 
whom he had lately sent thither as general of the forces, 
had nearly driven the Irish into resistance; but, in the mean 
time, the now undisguised objects of the king’s policy 
began to aw r aken a feeling of opposition in the members of 
the Church of England also, who, though in theory ad¬ 
mitting the doctrines of passive obedience in their fullest 
extent, in practice qualified those doctrines wffien they found 
that they could only be carried out at the expense of their 
religion; accordingly James resolved to subdue the spirit of 
the Church of England, and erected a court not very unlike 
the Court of High Commission that existed fifty years before, 
with even greater powers than had been possessed by that 
obnoxious tribunal, as it had authority “ to punish all who 
seemed to be suspected of offences.” It was not difficult to 
find a victim for so comprehensive a definition; a London 
clergyman, of the name of Sharp, had preached against 
popery, and a royal mandate was issued to Compton, the 
bishop of London, ordering him to suspend him. It was in 
vain that Compton replied that, till Sharp was condemned 
by a competent court, he had no power to suspend him; 


A.P. 

1686— 

1087- 


492 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



AD. 

168 G— 

IG87. 


and that he did, in fact, privately enjoin Sharp to desist 
from preaching. Compton was summoned to appear before 
the new ecclesiastical court, was himself suspended for dis¬ 
obedience to the royal mandate, and had his name struck 
out of the list of privy councillors. Halifax also was dis¬ 
missed from his office; and was followed not long after by 
Rochester, the king’s brother-in-law, because he refused to 
change his religion at the king’s request. Clarendon, James’s 
other brother-in-law, was recalled from Ireland, and the 
whole power remained in the hands of Sunderland, who had 
lately completed a bargain with Louis to betray to him all 
the secrets of his master for a pension of between 5000?. 
and 6000?. a year. Tyrconnel, a man if possible more 
worthless still, had no longer any rival in Ireland; and in 
Scotland the earl of Perth, the chancellor, who had secured 
the king’s favour by becoming a convert to popery, pushed 
forward his designs with an open assumption of arbitrary 
power that could not as yet be ventured on in England. 
Without any law or resolution of the state to authorize 
such an injunction, he forbade the booksellers in Edinburgh 
to sell any book without his licence. One bookseller told 
the officers that he had one book which reflected on popery 
in very coarse terms, and asked whether he might sell it; 
they required to see a copy, and he showed them the Bible. 
The chancellor proceeded to fit up a chapel for the celebra¬ 
tion of the mass in his own house, the city rose in a for¬ 
midable riot, the dragoons were called out, several people 
were killed, and though James himself sent down orders to 
punish the rioters severely, and not to spare the torture, a 
formidable spirit of discontent spread all over that kingdom : 
the Scottish parliament refused to pass the measures which 
the king desired for the indulgence of the Roman Catholics; 
it was prorogued, and James, by his own authority, dispensed 
with the laws against them, and admitted them into the 
council and other important offices. 

In England it was determined to begin the attack on the 
Church by violating the privileges of the universities. The 
deanery of Christ Church, at Oxford, was conferred on a 
Roman Catholic; still that office was in the gift of the 
crown. Shortly afterwards the presidency of Magdalen 
fell vacant, the election to which was vested in the fel¬ 
lows ; and as they refused to elect a president who was not 
qualified according to the statutes which they had sworn 


XLVII.] JAMES II. 493 

to observe, they were forcibly ejected from the college, and 
declared incapable of ever holding any Church preferment. 
At Cambridge, for refusing to make a Benedictine monk a 
master of arts, the vice-chancellor was summoned before the 
new high commission, deprived of his office, and of the 
emoluments of the mastership of his college. In both towns 
great indignation was manifested, which broke out in acts 
of open violence ; and James began to foresee that he might 
find, that in England also compliance with his orders could 
only be enforced by his dragoons; bat many of the troops 
were not well inclined to aid in the establishment of popery, 
and he had no means of compelling their obedience. At 
that time there was no mutiny act, and the military tribu¬ 
nals had no authority except during war. James determined 
to strike terror into the army by trying some deserters in 
the civil courts. The most eminent judges pronounced the 
idea illegal: they were dismissed. With some difficulty 
successors were found for them servile enough to commit 
even murder at the king’s bidding; and, when the obsequi¬ 
ousness of the bench was thus secured, several deserters 
were brought to trial, and executed by their sentence. 

James had dismissed the earls of Clarendon and Rochester 
because they would not change their religion; and, after 
trying in vain to induce his daughter, the princess Anne, to 
change hers, in which event he would probably have endea¬ 
voured to procure a settlement of the crown on her, in 
preference to her elder sister, the princess of Orange, he 
actually consented to a scheme of Tyrconnel’s for separating 
Ireland from the British dominions after his own death, 
and for annexing it to France. However, before this ini¬ 
quitous scheme could be proceeded with, it was announced 
that the queen was with child; and thenceforth all the hopes 
of the court were fixed on her delivery, which the Roman 
Catholics prayed might, and confidently predicted would, 
bless the king with a male heir. 

This event, however grateful to James, was not without 
its embarrassments, rendering it, as it did, indispensable to 
summon a parliament to provide for a regency, if the ex¬ 
pected child should prove a boy, and the king should die 
before he attained his majority. But a parliament would be 
certain to attack the king’s recent actions, and to oppose his 
future designs, unless some means could be devised of 
acquiring an absolute control over the elections. It, by any 


A.D. 

IG87— 

HJ88. 







494 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. means, a majority in the commons could be secured, James 
1()87 was prepared to take the most desperate measures to disarm 
1G88. opposition of the lords, even if it should be necessary, as 
Sunderland threatened, to raise all the troopers of the life¬ 
guards to the peerage. To pack the house of commons was 
the difficulty. The lord-lieutenants of the different counties, 
and the sheriffs, though many of them had been designedly 
selected from the Roman Catholics, for the most part refused 
to become agents in the promotion of such an object. The 
nonconformist party, still numerous, was disposed, from 
their horror of popery, to combine with the members of the 
Established Church ; and every day showed that the more 
unscrupulously the government attempted to overbear oppo¬ 
sition, the more universal and the more resolute would that 
opposition be. 

Yet, in spite of these signs of the times, sufficient to 
appal the wisest and the boldest men, James proceeded to 
acts more notoriously illegal than ever. In April, 1687, he 
had issued, by his sole authority, a declaration of indulgence, 
abrogating all religious tests, and suspending all penal laws 
against all classes of Nonconformists; he now, at the end of 
April, 1688, published a second declaration, similar to the 
first, with the addition that he would thenceforth employ no 
one who was not prepared to concur in all his designs; and, 
a few days afterwards, he issued an order in council, com¬ 
manding this declaration to be read in all churches on two 
successive Sundays by the officiating ministers. The first 
Sunday appointed was the 20th of May, in London ; the 
3rd of June, in the country parishes. After long and 
anxious deliberation the London clergy resolved, in a body, 
that it was against their consciences to comply with the 
royal mandate. The bishops of the province of Canterbury 
were invited to Lambeth by archbishop Sancroft, to delibe¬ 
rate on the same matter. The notice given was unavoidably 
so short that onlv a few could arrive in time. Those who 
attended, seven in number, signed an address to the king, 
drawn up in respectful terms, but avowing that, as, by the 
repeated decisions of parliament, the sovereign had not 
power to dispense with the laws, they could not be parties 
to the publication of his majesty’s declaration. James was 
furious, and reproached them bitterly when they attended to 
present their address. His anger was increased by the fact 
of the great majority of the clergy refusing to read his 


XLVII.] JAMES II. 495 

declaration, while those who consented for the most part 
saw their congregations quit the church on hearing the first 
words of it, and he summoned the bishops before the council. 
They acknowledged their signatures to the address, and then 
Jefferies, as chancellor, called upon them to give bail to 
answer a criminal information for having published a seditious 
libel. They refused to comply. No peer, as they truly said, 
could by law be required to give bail; and Jefferies, by the 
order of James, signed a warrant to commit them to the 
Tower. 

They were sent to their prison by water ; but the Thames 
was crowded with boats, the crews of which greeted them on 
their passage with acclamations and prayers for their safety. 
The soldiers who were appointed to guard them were actuated 
by the same feelings. The usual military toasts were laid 
aside, and no other health was drunk but theirs. The first 
nobles of the land flocked to the Tower to pay their respects 
to them, while the humbler classes thronged Tower Hill, 
catching with eagerness at every report of the health and 
conduct of those whose cause they identified with their 
own. 

The queen’s confinement had not been expected till July ; 
but, on the 10th of June, two days after the committal of 
the bishops, she was safely delivered of a son, whom the 
universal belief at the time affirmed to be a supposititious 
child. There is not the slightest doubt that he was the 
genuine offspring of the queen ; but, so singular was James’s 
mismanagement of every thing, that the steps taken to prove 
him so were precisely those which would have been taken if 
an imposture had been intended. None of those most 
interested were present. The princess Anne was at Bath, 
not expecting the event to happen so early. Lord Clarendon, 
her uncle, was at hand, but he was not summoned ; nor the 
archbishop, who might easily have been brought from the 
Tower; nor were any persons allowed to be present at the 
birth but Roman Catholics, or Protestants like Jefferies, 
justly more distrusted than any Roman Catholics. 

The 29th of June was fixed for the trial of the bishops, 
and the whole nation, in a state of violent excitement, 
awaited the result. Even Sunderland and Jefferies were 
alarmed at the unmistakable signs of the public feelings, 
and would gladly have seen James seize the opportunity of 
the birth of the prince of Wales to drop all further pro- 


A.D. 

1688. 






496 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. ceedings ; but bis obstinacy increased daily. He continually 

16ti8. declared that concessions had ruined his father, and that he 
himself had hitherto been too indulgent. Every possible 
precaution had been taken to pack both the jury and the 
judges, one of whom, in defiance of the law, was an avowed 
Soman Catholic ; but, as all the ablest lawyers in the king¬ 
dom had been, one after another, dismissed from the service 
of the crown for giving opinions adverse to the king’s 
designs, the advocates employed by the bishops were greatly 
superior to those who conducted the prosecution. The case 
had nearly broken down by the inability of the crown to 
prove the publication of the address; but, fortunately for 
the great interests of liberty, that difficulty was got over, 
and the question was to be decided on the broad ground of 
whether a respectful address, of which every word was true, 
presented by peers of England to their sovereign, was “ a 
false, malicious, and seditious libel,” as the indictment 
termed it, such as could render its authors liable to prosecu¬ 
tion. On this occasion the junior counsel of the bishops, a 
barrister of the name of Somers, first distinguished himself 
by the weighty arguments with which he disproved every 
word of the indictment. The judges summed up variously. 
Two of the four pronounced the address no libel. The jury 
deliberated all night, and in the morning pronounced a ver¬ 
dict of not guilty. 

In the history of the world no judicial decision has pro¬ 
duced such ecstatic delight. The whole assembly which 
filled Westminster Hall greeted it with one unanimous 
shout. That shout was caught up by the still greater mul¬ 
titude which thronged the avenues to the court. It was 
spread over the whole city, and when the news reached the 
regiments encamped at Hounslow, which James had that 
morning gone down to visit, the soldiers broke out into 
similar acclamations. James asked the cause of the uproar. 
“Nothing,” replied the person addressed, “but that the 
bishops are acquitted.” “ Do you call that nothing ?” said 
the baffled tyrant. “ But so much the worse for them.” 
At night the whole metropolis blazed with bonfires, the pope 
was burnt in effigy, and, as the news reached the principal cities 
of the kingdom, the enthusiastic joy exhibited in every one 
of them almost equalled the exultation of the Londoners. 

The very same day seven of the greatest nobles, or most 
influential men in the kingdom, forwarded to the Hague an 


JAMES II. 


497 


XL VII.] 

invitation which had been some weeks in preparation, 
entreating the prince of Orange to come to their assistance, 
promising at once to join him with every man they could 
raise, and assuring him that they only represented the feel¬ 
ings of a vast majority of the whole nation. 

William received the invitation with pleasure, hut also with 
a full sense of the difficulties which it laid him under. It 
was a fine thing to become king of England, but the power 
thus proffered to him (for however the inviters and the 
invited might disguise the fact to themselves, there was but 
little doubt that their success could only be purchased by 
the entire deposition of James) derived its chief value in his 
eyes from the means which it would afford him of further 
counteracting the ambition of Louis, the object of his in¬ 
creasing enmity. That it might afford him such means it 
was essential that he should not offend the other Roman 
Catholic powers of Europe, whose co-operation was necessary 
to the success of his other designs. A second difficulty was 
to obtain the consent of the united states of Holland, any 
one of which had the right of preventing his meditated 
expedition, and some of which, especially the richest and 
most powerful of all, the state of Amsterdam, were eager 
partisans of the French alliance. The third difficulty was, 
as it was indispensable that he should be accompanied by an 
armed force, to avoid creating a feeling in the English that 
they had been subjugated by a foreign invader. His enemies 
themselves removed these difficulties. Just at this juncture 
Louis disgusted the other Roman Catholic princes of Europe 
by picking a wanton quarrel with the pope, and alienated 
his friends in Holland, partly by the cruelties which he was 
inflicting on his Huguenot subjects, many of whom were 
naturalized Dutchmen, and partly by laying prohibitory 
duties on important articles of their trade; while James, 
whom the acquittal of the bishops had only excited to greater 
fury, after in vain trying to wreak his vengeance on all the 
clergy who had refused to read his declaration, and trying, 
with equal ill success, to obtain the unconditional co-opera¬ 
tion of the army, sent over to Tyrconnel for bodies of Irish 
troops, by whose aid he proposed to coerce the English, 
whether civilians or soldiers; disregarding the fact, that the 
recollection of the Irish massacre had not yet died away, and 
that at that time there were no foreigners so much detested 
in England as the Irish. 


A.D. 

16 * 88 . 







498 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. William availed himself of the errors of his enemies with 

1688. infinite skill. To the emperor he represented that persecu¬ 
tors like James and like Louis were the real foes of the 
Roman Catholic faith. The leaders of the Trench faction at 
home he courted with increasing assiduity, addressing him¬ 
self to their feelings both as Protestants and as merchants. 
And in the mean time, without divulging his plans to any 
one, he pressed on the preparations for his meditated ex¬ 
pedition with the utmost vigour and promptness. D’Avaux, 
the Trench ambassador at the Hague, a man of great diplo¬ 
matic skill, discovered the preparations and divined their 
object; but neither he nor his master could prevail on James 
to take proper precautions against them. Sunderland, quick 
to discern the probable course of events, had begun to be¬ 
tray him to William, and now exerted all his abilities and all 
his influence to lull him into a security, which he, best of all 
men, knew to have no foundation. At last William’s pre¬ 
parations were completed, and then, when all was ready, he 
solicited the sanction of the states. It was formally given; 
and, on the 19th of October, he put to sea with a fleet which, 
including transports, amounted tp nearly 500 sail, and with 
an army of about 14,000 men. 

A few days earlier James had received, from the Trench 
ambassador at the Hague, news of what was about to happen, 
so certain that he could no longer refuse to believe them. 
He at once fitted out a fleet under the command of lord 
Dartmouth, raised fresh troops, and sent to Scotland and to 
Ireland for the English regiments in those countries, so that 
he reckoned that in a week or two he should have above 
40,000 men under arms; and began also to seek to regain 
the good will of his people by conciliatory measures. He 
rescinded the suspension of the bishop of London ; he issued 
a proclamation, promising to protect the Church of England ; 
he replaced the different magistrates and officers whom he 
had lately dismissed, abolished the Court of High Commis¬ 
sion, and restored the ejected fellows of Magdalen. He even 
condescended to summon an extraordinary meeting of the 
privy council, the peers, judges, and other persons of weight 
and influence, and to lay before them ample proofs that the 
infant prince was really the offspring of the queen. These 
concessions now came too late; they were attributed to fear 
alone; and he still refused to abandon the dispensing power, 
his claim to which had been the chief cause of his difficulties. 


i 


JAMES II. 


499 


XL VII.] 

Before he set sail, William issued a temperate and states¬ 
manlike declaration of the causes and objects of his enter¬ 
prise ; setting forth the continued violations of the law by 
James, his open attacks on the established religion, his op¬ 
pression of individuals, and his denial, even to the noblest of 
his subjects, of the right to petition for the removal of those 
grievances. He mentioned also the doubts entertained by 
the generality of the nation respecting the birth of the 
prince of Wales, and, finally, renounced all idea of conquest; 
and, though he was preparing to introduce a foreign force 
into the island, he promised that they should all be with¬ 
drawn the moment tranquillity was re-established by the 
unbiassed decisions of a free parliament. 

A superstitious man might have thought he saw a bad 
omen for his ultimate success in a violent storm which 
attacked the fleet as soon as it was out of sight of land, and 
compelled it to put back in great disorder and distress. But 
the mind of William was not to be daunted by vain terrors: 
a very few days sufficed to repair damages, and he again set 
sail. 

The whole fleet was under the command of admiral 
Herbert, an officer of reputation, who had lately joined him 
from England, and whose name had attracted many English 
sailors to the service; but the wind which was fair for 
William, who was proceeding to the western coast, prevented 
lord Dartmouth, the admiral of the king’s fleet, from coming 
out of the Thames. On the 5th of November, already cele¬ 
brated as the anniversary of one great deliverance of the 
kingdom from popery, William and his army landed safely 
in Torbay, and, without delay, began to march towards the 
metropolis. He was received with great joy by the citizens 
of Exeter. After a few days many leading country gentle¬ 
men and noblemen joined him, and he advanced towards 
Salisbury, where the king’s army was assembling, and where 
James himself was preparing to place himself at its head. 
Meantime James’s tone was as arrogant and unyielding as 
ever. He returned a haughty answer to a petition from many 
of the principal prelates and noblemen, praying him to call a 
free parliament; gave notice that he would receive no 
communication from the invaders, but would hang any mes¬ 
senger who should attempt to bring one: and his very last 
act before quitting London to join his army, was to appoint 
a council of five lords to manage affairs in his absence, of 

k k 2 


A.D. 

1G88. 





500 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. . whom two were Roman Catholics, and a third was Jefferies. 

1688. Th e infant prince of Wales was sent to Portsmouth, from 
which town it was expected that it would be easy to convey 
him out of the reach of danger, if it should appear advisable 
to do so. 

In the northern counties, the news of William’s landing 
was received with gladness. Lord Danby secured York, 
the earl of Devonshire collected a force at Derby and Not¬ 
tingham, and the news of these events produced their natu¬ 
ral effects on the two parties, now drawing near to each 
other with hostile feelings on the Wiltshire downs. But 
James, though eager to fight for his crown, was destined to 
fiud himself deprived of the power of fighting. The officer 
in whose skill he placed the greatest reliance was Churchill, 
who, in a great degree, owed his rise to James’s favours, and 
who was now employed by him in an honourable and lucra¬ 
tive post. Churchill was believed to be fond of gain, and 
indifferent to religion; but, like many others, though not 
careful to obey its precepts, he clung to the ancient forms 
to which he had been accustomed, and shrunk from the idea 
of aiding a Roman Catholic to attack Protestantism. He 
now quitted the camp of the king, and repaired to William, 
who was well able to appreciate the value of such a recruit. 
But his own desertion was not the only blow which he in¬ 
flicted on his late master. Lady Churchill was the bosom 
friend of the princess Anne, and by her persuasion the prin¬ 
cess also quitted Whitehall, and, as the royal army lay 
between her and her brother-in-law, took refuge with his 
partisans in the north, being escorted by her old tutor, 
Compton, the bishop of London, who had formerly been in 
the life-guards, and who now resumed his military habili¬ 
ments for a while, to take command of the princess’s 
escort, and conduct her safely to Nottingham. Her hus¬ 
band, prince Gfeorge of Denmark, had quitted James’s camp 
for that of William a day or two before. His loss was no 
particular cause of regret to James, for he had neither abi¬ 
lities nor influence; but the flight of Anne caused him, 
apparently, the severest pang that he had yet felt. “ God 
help me,” said he, when the news was broken to him ; “ my 
own children have forsaken me !” 

He had returned to London and summoned the peers who 
were in the metropolis to aid him with their advice. Hali¬ 
fax was the chief spokesman; his counsel was to summon a 


JAMES II. 


501 


XL VI I.] 

parliament, and to open a negotiation with 'William; but, 
as a preliminary indispensable to the success of these mea¬ 
sures, to dismiss all Roman Catholics from office, to separate 
himself from France, and to proclaim an amnesty to all those 
who had opposed or who were now opposing him. The 
amnesty was the point which James seemed most unwilling 
to concede; but at last he agreed to adopt all the measures 
proposed to him, and deputed Halifax with two colleagues to 
treat on his part with the prince of Orange. That same day 
he announced to the French ambassador that his acquies¬ 
cence was a mere feint, having for its object the gaining 
time to send his wife and infant son to France, and that, as 
soon as they were safe, he too should quit England and take 
refuge in Ireland, where the people would stand by him, of 
perhaps in Scotland or France. 

To his dismay his plans were counteracted by an obstacle 
which he had never anticipated. Lord Dartmouth, on re¬ 
ceiving orders to convoy the young prince to France, posi¬ 
tively refused to obey, pronouncing that it would be almost 
treason to place the heir to the throne in the power of 
Louis, and that it would hopelessly exasperate the nation, 
who, evidently, were sufficiently alienated already, for adhe¬ 
rents were now flocking to William with daily increasing 
rapidity, till the nobles who surrounded him exceeded many 
times the number of the remnant who still formed the court 
at Whitehall. 

On the 8th of December Halifax and his colleagues 
reached Hungerford, the town which William had appointed 
for receiving them. Their proposal was to refer every 
matter in dispute to the decision of a free parliament, to 
which William at once agreed. Other points of less im¬ 
portance were still under discussion, when James, having 
now gained time to mature his plans, committed his wife 
and son to the care of Lauzun, one of the most distinguished 
nobles of France, who, being in disgrace with Louis, had 
been for some time a resident in England. Lauzun dis¬ 
charged his trust with great address, and, on the 10th of 
December, the queen and her infant were safely landed on 
the French coast. A_t the same time that James received 
the news of their having begun their voyage prosperously, 
a despatch from Halifax reached him, giving him hopes of 
the favourable issue of the negotiations at Hungerford; 
but his purpose was too firmly fixed to be laid aside; and 


AD. 

1688. 








502 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. long before dawn on the lltli he quitted the palace, 
lrro — crosse d the Thames, into which he threw the great seal of 
<J ‘ the kingdom, with the vain idea that its loss would prove a 
serious obstacle to the despatch of the necessary business 
of the state, and then getting into a carriage, drove with 
all speed to Sheerness, where a custom-house barge was 
awaiting his arrival. 

Before he started he sent orders to Feversham to disband 
the army; and his obedience laid London at the mercy of 
a mob, who, instigated by some unknown prompters, or 
perhaps merely by the opportunity of rapine and licence 
unexpectedly afforded them, committed frightful disorders, 
burning numbers of houses, especially such as belonged 
to Boman Catholics, and pillaging the inhabitants, so 
that the metropolis bore the appearance of having been 
sacked by a victorious enemy, till the militia were got under 
arms, who at last restored tranquillity and confidence. 

James, however, had not yet quitted the kingdom. Some 
fishermen had boarded the vessel in which he was preparing 
to flee, and, taking him for father Petre, had forced him 
back to the shore, and treated him with rudeness and 
violence, till his person was recognized. Returning to 
Rochester, he sent lord Feversham to William, with a letter 
proposing a conference, and advanced to London; but 
"William refused a personal interview, and put Feversham 
under arrest for coming to his camp without a safe conduct. 

In flying James had done the very thing most advan¬ 
tageous for the designs of William. Nothing could have 
been so unfavourable to those designs as the interruption 
of his flight, and his return to London. The prince’s object 
now was to frighten him into repeating his attempt, yet 
without committing any act which could be said to have 
afforded grounds for alarm. James was perfectly aware 
that his enemies wished him to flee again, and yet had not 
courage to disappoint them. William, who had reached 
Windsor a day or two before, convened the lords who 
were in his train to deliberate on the present crisis. 
Halifax, as usual, presided over their deliberations, and 
they all recommended that James should be requested to 
retire from London, where his presence might cause dis¬ 
orders, to Ham House on the banks of the Thames. James 
preferred returning to Rochester, and from that city he 
made his escape secretly, embarked on board a small vessel, 





JAMES II. 


503 


XLVII.] 

and on the 24th of December he landed safely in France. 
He was received by Louis with magnanimous hospitality. 
The palace of St. Germains was assigned him for his resi¬ 
dence, with an income of nearly 50,000Z. a year; and no 
exertion was spared to prevent his being made sensible, as 
far as outward circumstances go, of the terrible fall he had 
thus experienced. 

William was received in London with rejoicings sur¬ 
passing even those which had greeted the restoration of 
Charles, and proceeded with all speed to re-establish order. 
He summoned the peers to meet, and issued a similar in¬ 
vitation to all those who had sat in any house of commons 
in the time of Charles II., requesting them, when they 
met, to decide on the proper steps to be taken in the 
present state of the country. Both assemblies agreed in 
requesting him to issue circular letters, in the place of the 
usual writs, to all the constituencies of the kingdom, in¬ 
viting them to send representatives to a parliament, and 
in entreating him also to assume in the mean time the 
provisional administration of the government. Shortly 
afterwards the Scottish estates adopted similar resolutions, 
and William at once complied with their requests. 

On the 22nd of January the English parliament met. 
Various schemes were proposed for the future government 
of the kingdom. Some wished to declare the throne vacant 
by James’s abdication, as implied in his flight from the 
kingdom; others desired to avoid any such express declara¬ 
tion, but proposed to act on the understanding implied in 
it. However, the resolution declaring the throne vacant 
was passed. The next question was, how the vacancy 
should be filled up. Some proposed a regency. William 
announced that, though he would accept the crown if offered 
to him, he would not accept the regency. Others insisted 
that the princess Mary had a right to succeed to her father, 
but were willing that she should give the prince, her hus¬ 
band, whatever share of the government she chose. It was 
found that this pleased neither prince nor princess. Dr. 
Burnet, who had long enjoyed Mary’s entire confidence, 
declared that her ideas of the submission of a wife were 
such, that she had often assured him of her determination, 
if she came to the English throne in the natural way, at 
once to surrender her power into the hands of her husband; 
while William avowed that he would never be tied to his 


A.D. . 
1688 — 
1689 . 





504 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. wife’s apron-strings, nor accept from her a subordinate and 

1G8D. precarious place in the government. At last it was decided 
that the prince and princess should reign jointly, both 
enjoying equal dignity, but that the administration of the 
government should be vested in William alone. On their 
decease the crown was settled first on the posterity of 
Mary, then on that of the princess Anne, and, after them, 
on that of William. To the instrument that conferred 
the sovereignty on them was appended a declaration of 
right, carefully drawn up by a committee of the commons, 
embodying the chief principles of the constitution, as the 
rules which the new rulers were hound to observe. 

The very day that these resolutions were finally passed, 
the princess Mary landed at Greenwich, and proceeded to 
Whitehall. On the next day, the 13th of February, the 
two houses, with Halifax, the speaker of the lords, and 
Powle, member for Cirencester, the speaker of the commons, 
at their head, repaired to Whitehall, where they were 
received by William and Mary, standing under a canopy 
of state, erected for the occasion. Halifax, in the name of 
the whole people of England, entreated them to accept the 
crown. William, in his own name and that of the princess, 
in a few gracious words declared their acceptance of the 
noble trust committed to them. The heralds in'front of 
the palace proclaimed William and Mary king and queen 
of England, amid the beating of drums, the clang of 
trumpets, and the acclamations of the vast multitude, which 
reached further than the eye could see, and the reign of 
James II. was terminated. 

The deposition of James was the act of almost the whole 
nation; and no greater condemnation of a sovereign can 
be pronounced than the mere statement of such a fact. It 
was not yet thirty years since the people had been thrown 
into a perfect delirium of loyalty by the return of himself 
and his brother. It was only four years since he had 
ascended the throne, strengthened by the failure of the 
attempts of his enemies to exclude him from it, and with 
every opportunity of becoming the powerful sovereign of a 
willing people, if he had only adhered to the promises con¬ 
tained in his first speech to his council. In that brief 
period, by an unbroken course of tyranny, cruelty, bigotry, 
and faithlessness, he united the whole nation' in a resolu¬ 
tion to get rid of him, even at the price of violating what 


JAMES II. 


505 


XLVII.] 

many of them had previously conceived to he the funda¬ 
mental maxims not only of policy, but also of religion. 
His sole virtue was courage, his sole talent some degree of 
aptitude for business, and a respectable skill in seamanship; 
but his faults, such as have been described in the preceding 
pages, would have outweighed far greater qualifications for 
the exercise of authority. 

Yet even his faults and errors have proved beneficial to 
his country. Had he been possessed of but a slight degree 
of prudence or of honesty the revolution would not have 
taken place, and some such revolution as I have recorded 
was necessary for the secure establishment of the liberties 
of the people. The restoration might have afforded oppor¬ 
tunities for the establishment of those liberties on a proper 
footing, but the people were too joyful to be inclined to 
reason with justice or to act with foresight; the opportunity 
was neglected, and the whole conduct of Charles II. and of 
James showed plainly that their ideas of the right of kings 
to absolute power came little short of those which had pro¬ 
duced the fatal mistakes of their father. Those ideas had 
now received their deathblow; the revolution had decided 
in language that could never hereafter be misunderstood, 
that kings derived their power from the people, and were 
bound to exercise it for the good of the people. The prac¬ 
tical denial of this constitutional principle had led to the 
deposition of an hereditary king, to the disinheriting of his 
unoffending heir, and to the banishment of all his family 
who could be supposed to be partakers of his sentiments. 
Many such violations of the line of succession, by creating 
a general feeling of the insecurity of government, would be 
fatal to the tranquillity, and, therefore, to the prosperity of a 
country. One such break, by placing both the authority of 
the crown and the liberties of the people on a solid, because 
on the only true foundation, has secured both tranquillity 
and prosperity to the English nation, such as no other people 
has ever enjoyed. 

Times of revolution are favourable to the progress of 
human intellect; and it is therefore not surprising that the 
latter half of the seventeenth century produced some of our 
greatest writers in every branch of learning and literature. 
It was the age of Milton and Dryden, the greatest of our 
poets, great masters also of prose, though the pre-eminence 
of their poetical genius has almost buried their other works 


A.D. 

1G89. 






506 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A - D * in oblivion, and of Butler, the author of Hudibras, a work 

1G89. no ^ on jy delightful for its original and ceaseless wit, but 
especially valuable as affording one of the truest pictures of 
the feelings of his age. It was the age of Jeremy Taylor, 
of Barrow, of Stillingfleet, and of Tillotson, preachers who 
have no superiors, and scarcely any equals, and of Bunyan, 
who still preaches to the existing generation, not indeed in 
learned and argumentative sermons or expositions, but in the 
exquisite allegory of the Pilgrim’s Progress, which, though 
long undervalued, has won its way to universal admiration, 
and has now an honoured place equally in the nursery of the 
child and in the library of the maturer scholar. In history it 
produced Clarendon, whose great work has been already men¬ 
tioned, and Burnet, whose reputation, at the distance of a 
century and a half from his death, is daily rising as to the 
general accuracy of his narrative. In Charles’s reign Harvey 
discovered the circulation of the blood, and Newton began 
to remove the veil from the sublimest mysteries of nature. 
Others there were of high genius, but their writings are, 
for the most part, so deformed with indecency, even beyond 
the general grossness of the age, that their names do not 
deserve to be recorded. It is a stain which pollutes many 
of the works of even the great Dryden. The improvement 
of the nation at large in virtue and morality, stoutly as¬ 
serted by some persons, is as positively denied by others; 
but it is quite certain, and it may be asserted with a thank¬ 
ful pride, that there is no society now to be found which 
would overlook such disgraceful blemishes in even the 
brightest genius, or would tolerate for a moment the li¬ 
centiousness of style and of language which so many of the 
writers in the reign of Charles adopted as the surest and 
speediest road to universal popularity. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

WILLIAM AND MARY. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperor. 

Leopold. 

France. 
Louis XIV. 


Spain. a.d. 
Charles II. 

Philip V. . .1700 
Stveden. 

Charles XII. . 1G97 


Popes. a.d. 
Innocent XI. 
Alexander VIII. 1G89 
Innocent XII. . 1691 
Clement XI. . 1700 


1689. The task which William imposed upon himself by thus ac- 





XLVIII.] WILLIAM AND MARY. 507 

cepting the sovereignty was not without difficulty; for a 
revolution, even when conducted so peacefully as that which 
had recently taken place, could not fail to have unsettled the 
minds of men ; the whole fabric of government had been 
shaken, and was to be re-established on a foundation wholly 
new; reverence for, and confidence in, the laws, which had 
been greatly impaired by the notorious corruption of the 
judges during the last ten years, was to be restored; what 
was harder still, the animosities of faction were to be ap¬ 
peased, and every care was to be taken to prevent the recent 
changes from appearing to be the result of the triumph of 
one party over the other. The successful attainment of 
these ends required great tact and address, and, if William 
in some degree failed in the prosecution of them, his 
failure must, in part, be ascribed to the real difficulties 
of his situation ; in part, however, it must be acknow¬ 
ledged that he increased those difficulties by his own con¬ 
duct. He was naturally reserved even when in his own 
country, but in England he became even morose and sullen ; 
while the preference for foreigners, which he incessantly 
exhibited, to the prejudice of his new subjects, naturally 
alienated from him the good will of many, who, if he had 
let them, would have been disposed to think of nothing but 
of the great benefits which he had conferred upon the 
country. 

His first steps showed an inclination to distribute his 
favours equally between the two parties which divided the 
kingdom. The white staff of the treasurer, he made a rule, 
which since his time has generally been observed, of never 
entrusting to a single individual. It was put into commis¬ 
sion : the first commissioner, or, as we should now call him, 
the first lord, though that office was not then considered the 
highest place in the ministry, was lord Mordaunt, better 
known by his later title of lord Peterborough; but the officer 
on whom the real weight of affairs devolved was lord Godol- 
phin, whose talents for business, imperturbable temper, and 
invariable tact (which caused Charles II. to say of him that 
he was never either in the way or out of the way) were 
rapidly raising him to distinction. The privy seal, Halifax, 
and one secretary of state, the earl, afterwards duke of 
Shrewsbury, were Whigs; Danby, afterwards successively 
marquis of Caermarthen and duke of Leeds, the president 
of the council, and lord Nottingham, the other secretary, 


AD. 

1689. 




508 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. were Tories. They were all able men; but, unfortunately, 

1689. £p e ^ w0 a^lest^ Halifax and Danby, bore each other a per¬ 
sonal antipathy ; and Shrewsbury had not the nerve requi¬ 
site for so prominent a position in so trying a time, nor 
firmness sufficient to resist the influence of his mother, a 
woman notorious for pre-eminent infamy, even in the dis¬ 
solute court of Charles, who soon induced him to listen to 
the overtures of James. At a later period he redeemed his 
character by the promptitude and resolution with which, at 
the critical moment of the death of Anne, he contributed, 
more perhaps than any man in the kingdom, to the esta¬ 
blishment of the house of Hanover on the throne. 

But, able as they all were, and placed, as they ostensibly 
were, in the highest positions in the kingdom, they soon 
found that they enjoyed but a limited degree of the royal 
confidence, when compared with the foreigners whom 
William had brought with him from Holland. On them 
were bestowed the most lucrative offices, and those which 
brought them most immediately in contact with the king’s 
person. He even paraded his preference of them in the 
most ostentatious manner; dining in public with them as 
the companions of his table, while his English subjects of 
the very highest rank stood unnoticed behind his chair. 
The impolicy of such conduct was as glaring as its impro¬ 
priety. It is true that, on one side, he was himself a 
foreigner; but, on the other, he was an Englishman, and 
an English prince; and his British subjects, who, by the 
position in which they had placed him, showed that they 
chiefly remembered his British blood, should never have 
been driven, in their own despite, to recollect that he was 
also a foreigner. It was no wonder that he speedily became 
unpopular. He was also in very bad health, and those who 
saw him presaged for him no long continuance in this world ; 
some even believed that, if his disease failed to kill him, 
the papists would certainly contrive to assassinate him. 

That James would make a strenuous effort to recover his 
throne was undoubted ; and no one looked upon the success 
of such an enterprise as desperate. All, even the ministers, 
agreed that it depended on himself; Halifax said that, if 
he were a Protestant, he could not be kept out four months, 
while Danby thought that the people would even be satis¬ 
fied if he only gave them security for their own religion. For¬ 
tunately for William, and for England, James was his own 



WILLIAM AND MARY. 


509 


XL VIII.] 

worst enemy. Full of ideas of his own abstract and inde¬ 
feasible rights, he would not stoop to conciliate even those 
leaders of the nation whose support and co-operation were 
indispensable to his success. Many memorials are extant 
which he from time to time presented to Louis to urge him 
to take steps for his restoration; in every one of which he 
falls into the gross error of supposing that that restoration 
was to be the consequence of William’s unpopularity, and 
not of any regard or esteem that might be felt for himself: 
in fact any attempt to be popular he thought beneath his 
dignity. So self-blinded was he, that, in one document, he 
actually mentions, as a personal grievance, and as a slur 
upon the energy and honesty of the nation, that people are 
now so much at their ease that there are not many “ who 
will risk their fortunes and their lives to restore him,” 
forgetting how many, while he was actually king, risked 
both to get rid of him. 

Besides the uncertainty of affairs in England, it w r as 
generally thought very questionable what part Scotland 
would take, while Irish affairs were more doubtful still. 
The native Irish were a vast majority of the population, and 
were all Boman Catholics ; while the property of the island 
belonged almost wholly to the English settlers, who were 
Protestants. The seeds of disorder, therefore, were always 
present, even in the most tranquil times ; yet the state 
of Ireland was for a while neglected, because William 
relied on the assurances of Tyrconnel that he should 
be able easily to induce that kingdom peaceably to 
follow the lead of England. Even had he been sincere, 
he promised w r hat he had no ability to perform; for his 
violent and profligate administration had so alarmed the 
English, and had so excited the Irish party against them, 
that it was impossible to suppose that they would both 
agree together, and more especially that they would both 
agree to be guided by Tyrconnel; but, in fact, sincerity was 
at all times the last virtue to be found in him : at the very 
time that he was sending these assurances to William, he 
was sending other messages to St. Germains, to beg James 
to come over at once with a Erench force, and to tempt 
Louis to lend him an army by an offer to annex the whole 
island to Erance. As soon as his messengers had set sail 
for Erance, he called the native Irish to arms, and excited 
them to anticipate the arrival of James by the plunder and 
slaughter of the Protestants. Erom slaughter most of 


A.D. 

1680. 


510 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

■k* 1 ^ them escaped by fleeing to England, or by throwing them- 
selves into those towns, such as Enniskillen or Londonderry, 
the slender defences of which, though no one would then 
have expected them to repel an army, were still sufficient to 
defend them against a mob. But though they preserved 
their lives, they could not save their property. Houses 
were ransacked, plate was stolen, furniture was burnt; the 
flocks and herds, then the chief wealth of the country, were 
slaughtered, at first for food, then for their skins, and at 
last out of pure mischief and a love of destruction. Im¬ 
mense as the sum seems, the value of the property destroyed 
within a few weeks is estimated at five millions of money. 

James decided on adopting TyrconnePs advice, and crossed 
over to Ireland at the head of 2500 English and Irish troops, 
under the command of Rosen, a Erench marshal, and accom¬ 
panied also by a number of French officers. Louis had offered 
him the aid of a large French force, but James, with better 
judgment than he often displayed, declined them, preferring 
to trust to the support of his countrymen alone; but he 
accepted a large present of money, arms, and ammunition, 
and on the 12th of March he landed at Kinsale, and pro¬ 
ceeded to Dublin. He found war already raging: Tyrcon- 
nel had recruited his army till it amounted to near 40,000 
men; but the Protestants had endeavoured to make a stand 
in Ulster, and a pitched battle had taken place at Dromore, 
in which they had been wholly defeated. He found also two 
parties in the Irish council: the English Jacobites, who 
wished to secure his authority in Ireland, as a means for 
recovering him his authority in England ; and the native 
Irish, who desired to get rid of the English connexion alto¬ 
gether, and who, if unable to render Ireland an independent 
kingdom, would have preferred submitting to French do¬ 
minion, of which they had no experience, rather than to 
English rule, against which they had been in constant re¬ 
bellion for 500 years, and which the cruelties of Cromwell, 
within the memory of the elders of the existing generation, 
had made more odious than ever. 

After some vacillation, caused by the conflicting advice 
of the contending parties, and by the letters of Graham 
of Claverhouse, now lord Dundee, who pressed him to cross 
over to Scotland, where William had scarcely any troops, 
and where the great mass of the Highland population was 
ready to rise in his favour, James set out in person to 
besiege Londonderry, into which the principal forces of the 






WILLIAM AND MARY.. 


511 


XLVII1.] 

Protestants had thrown themselves. The governor, Lundy, 
was terrified at the thoughts of resistance to the superior 
numbers of the besiegers. He was deposed from his office, 
and the resolute defenders of the town selected as their 
commander an aged parson, named George Walker, who 
proved the most judicious choice that they could have made. 
He was aided by the military councils of major Baker. The 
two colleagues formed the men capable of bearing arms 
into a kind of garrison; they manned the walls, while the 
women brought them food and ammunition. The walls, 
however, were almost destitute of artillery, and were too 
low to afford them much protection against the fire of the 
besiegers; but, when breaches had been made, the storming 
parties were hurled back by the stubborn valour of the 
citizens. Fire and assault, however, were trifling evils, 
when compared with the famine which soon began to thin 
their ranks; but their noble resistance awakened the sym¬ 
pathy of the English parliament, where all parties united 
in pressing forward measures for their relief. The siege 
had commenced early in April, and by the middle of May 
reinforcements, and vessels laden with provisions, were 
sent from England. Unluckily William placed the whole 
under the command of Kirke; and he, slow and timid when 
no deed of atrocity was to be executed, was nearly a month 
on his passage. When he arrived, he was afraid to ap¬ 
proach either the besiegers or the besieged; but, with a 
cruelty almost beyond that with which he had flooded the 
towns of Somersetshire with blood, he tantalized the famish¬ 
ing inhabitants of Londonderry with the sight of his vessels 
laden with food, which he made no attempt to place within 
their reach. At length, on the 20th of July, positive orders 
reached him to force his way, at all hazards, into the town. 
The besiegers had thrown a boom across the Foyle, some 
way below the walls; it yielded to the charge of the heavily- 
laden vessels. Ship after ship passed on to the quay, greeted 
by the acclamations of men, who were now, almost beyond 
their hopes, saved from death, and from sufferings worse 
than death. The besieging army retired from the walls, 
which, for a hundred and five days, they had so fruitlessly 
threatened, and the north of Ireland was saved. 

James himself had long since returned to Dublin, where, 
at the beginning of May, he opened the parliament; but 
he had better have remained at Derry to share the disgrace 


A.D. 

1G8!L 




512 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 


a.d. of liis defeated army, than have given his assent to the 
1689. i nsane laws which the fury of the Irish party forced upon 
him. By one bill the act of settlement was repealed; 
by another the tithe was transferred from the Protestants 
to the Roman Catholics ; a third attainted nearly 3000 of 
the principal inhabitants of the kingdom. It was pro¬ 
ductive of even greater distress, that, to replenish the 
exchequer, he abused his prerogative by an extensive issue 
of bad money. All the brass that could be collected was 
coined at the Mint, the worthless counters received the 
names of the current coins, and every one who had any 
thing to sell was compelled to take them as such; that is 
to say, to part with his property for a sixtieth part of its 
value. Long after the act of attainder had ceased to spread 
alarm, or the tithe act to cause confiscation, the recol¬ 
lection of the misery produced by this coinage remained 
deeply impressed on the Irish mind, and the Orangeman, 
who, in this century, drank the health of William, amid 
the enumeration of warming-pans, wooden shoes, and other 
abominations, placed the brass money as the most practically 
grievous of the evils from which his country had been freed 
by the victory of William. 

It was impossible that these measures should fail to 
alienate many persons in England from the side of James. 
They frightened even the Roman Catholics, and made num¬ 
bers renounce his cause for ever. The same day that the 
boom across the Foyle was broken, the adherents of James 
sustained a defeat at Newton Butler. At the same time a 
force, consisting chiefly of French refugees, under marshal 
Schomberg, and of Dutch troops, under count Solmes, a 
favourite of William’s, but an incapable and worthless man, 
was sent to Ireland. James’s affairs were becoming des¬ 
perate, and the French envoy, who accompanied him, 
D’Avaux, proposed to him a plan, which he rejected with 
horror, and which Louis afterwards disapproved as impolitic, 
from the spirit of retaliation which it might arouse. It 
was no less than to cause a simultaneous massacre of all 
the Protestants in Ireland. He preferred to trust to an 
army raised by Tyrconnel, and to prepare to do battle for 
his crown with arms more becoming a sovereign than those 
employed by the unhappy Charles IX. 

Town after town fell before Schomberg; but, as his 
force was inferior in number to that of the enemy, and 





XLVIII.] WILLIAM AND MARY. ' 513 

very imperfect in discipline, he avoided any thing like a a.d. 
pitched battle, and, by a skilful choice of positions, main- l(i9 °- 
tained his ground during the whole winter, in spite of great 
losses from disease, caused by want of proper supplies and 
shelter, and in spite of great discontent in the army, because 
of their sufferings, and in England, because of his' apparent 
inactivity. 

Naval affairs did not go on so well. Admiral Herbert 
proved quite unequal to his reputation. In May, 1689, in 
an encounter on the Irish coast, near Bantry Bay, he had 
been beaten off by the French fleet, who landed* a small 
reinforcement of troops, and a large supply of money and 
provisions, for the use of James, and returned in safety; 
but, as he sent home a boastful despatch, dwelling on the 
superior numbers of the enemy, "William, who was partial 
to him, created him earl of Torrington, and continued him 
in the command. The next summer he was so strongly 
reinforced both from home and from Holland, as to find 
himself at the head of a fleet of nearly sixty ships; but 
Louis, who had certain intelligence of an extensive con¬ 
spiracy having been formed in England and Scotland to 
restore James, sent M. de Tourville, one of the most skilful 
sailors wdio has ever distinguished the French navy, with 
a fleet numerically superior, to give the conspirators coun¬ 
tenance and support, by assuming a formidable station 
in the Channel. Torrington retreated before him till he 
received positive orders from the council to fight; then he 
made a momentary stand off Beachy Head, placing the 
Hutch ships in the van, some of which suffered severely, 
and one was taken, and then, without having fired one 
English gun, he retreated into the Thames, taking up the 
buoys as he proceeded, that it might be impossible to pursue 
him. The alarm in London and the rest of the kingdom 
was great, and was increased by the news of a victory gained 
about the same time by the French over the Hutch at 
Fleurus, which made many people apprehend an invasion of 
England by the victorious army; and these terrors were 
augmented by the absence of William, who, three weeks 
before, had set out for Ireland, where he arrived on the 
14th of June, and, landing at Carrickfergus, assumed the 
command of the army, which now amounted to about 
30,000 men. James lay between him and Hublin with a 
somewhat smaller force; but the southern bank of the 

l 1 



514 ' HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. Boyne afforded him a position strong enough, in resolute 
h an( ] S!i to counterbalance a still greater disparity of** num¬ 
bers ; so strong, in fact, that Schomberg doubted the pro¬ 
priety of assailing it; but William, afraid that James would 
retreat, and so escape him, resolved on the attack, and early 
on the 1st of July began to force the passage of the river. 
The day before, while reconnoitring the enemy, he was 
wounded in the shoulder by a cannon-ball, which, however, 
did not prevent him from bearing his share in the battle, 
in which he displayed the greatest personal courage; while 
James, who, in former days, had also displayed the most 
fearless bravery in the naval battles against the Dutch, 
now exhibited such a want of it as greatly contributed to 
his defeat. William’s victory was complete. James, even 
before the conflict was over, quitted the field, and, breaking 
down the bridges over the different rivers as he passed, 
hastened to the coast, aud embarked for Trance, where he 
arrived in little more than a week after the battle in high 
spirits, recounting the tale of his defeat and disgrace to 
every one whom he met. The politeness with which the 
Trench nobles listened to him could not blind the acuteness 
of their perception of his character, or stifle the decisive 
accents with which they whispered to each other that they 
had only to hear James tell his own story to know why he 
was at St. Germains and his son-in-law at St. James’s. 
Those whom he left behind him, in spite of their loyalty, 
had not a much better opinion of him. He had been un¬ 
grateful enough to attribute his defeat to the inferiority of 
an Irish to an English army; but his officers said more 
truly that it had been caused by his own misconduct, and 
that if the English would only change kings with them, 
they would gladly fight the battle over again. 

Still the war in Ireland was not over. Sarsfield, the best 
officer in James’s service, had secured Galway and Sligo 
in the preceding winter. Cork and Kinsale too still ad¬ 
hered to James, and threatened a stubborn resistance ; but 
Churchill, who had lately been made earl of Marlborough, was 
sent from England with a small force to reduce them, a 
task which he executed with extraordinary despatch; and 
Limerick was now the only place of importances in Ireland 
which acknowledged James. Limerick was hardly more 
defensible than Londonderry had appeared to be; and the 
Trench commander, Lauzun, declaring that its walls might 
















WILLIAM AND MARY. 


515 


XL VIII.] 

be battered down with rotten- apples, declined risking his A ; D - 
reputation and the lives of his soldiers in so hopeless an 1690 
undertaking as an attempt to save it, and retired to France. 
Sarsfield alone upheld the drooping spirits of the citizens, 
and showed that courage, genius, and virtue were not the 
exclusive attributes of either party. William came in 
person against the last stronghold of his enemies; but he 
had outmarched his artillery; before it could join him 
Sarsfield, by a brilliant march, surprised and destroyed it. 
Deprived of all means of battering the town, the king was 
compelled to try the effect of an assault. The storming 
party easily forced their way into the town, but were over¬ 
whelmed in the streets. Sarsfield’s soldiers, when recovered 
from their first panic, fought furiously. Every citizen 
joined in the struggle with whatever arms he could procure; 
the women threw large stones and bottles from the windows ; 
mines blew up the foremost of the assailants; and, as, 
though it was only the end of August, the rainy season 
was beginning to set in, William, fearing that the state 
of the roads might not only prevent his supplies from reach¬ 
ing him, but might render his retreat at a later period 
difficult, raised the siege, and returned to England, leaving 
Ginkell, a Dutch officer of considerable reputation, as com- 
mander-in-chief. The war languished during the winter. 

In the spring of 1691, a fresh general, St. Ruth, arrived 
to take the command, since Sarsfield’s abilities were limited 
to the field of battle; but he was killed in a battle at 
Athlone, which, though unimportant in itself, decided the 
fate of the northern and western districts, and made it 
hopeless even for Sarsfield to defend Limerick any longer. 

On the 3rd of October he signed a capitulation. Those 
who wished to do so were allowed to retire in safety with 
him to France; those who preferred to remain behind were 
ensured equal security, and were gladly enlisted into Wil¬ 
liam’s army. 

In Scotland the war was of shorter duration; and, if it 
had not beeu for the violence of the Whig party, it is pos¬ 
sible that it might have been altogether prevented. The 
change brought about in that kingdom by the revolution 
was far more violent than in England, because while those 
who promoted it in England sought only to establish the 
laws on which James had trampled, in Scotland the object 
aimed at was to get rid of the laws altogether. Religious 

l 1 2 


51() HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

zeal, which had always been more furious there than in any 
country in Europe, was now more furious than ever. 
Episcopacy, always unpopular there, had been rendered 
additionally distasteful to the people by the severities with 
which Lauderdale and his colleagues had endeavoured to 
force it on them. William summoned a convention to meet 
at Edinburgh ; and, by his own authority, dispensed with 
the oath which would have deprived those who adhered to 
the covenant of their rights as electors. The Covenanters, 
now dominant, showed that in suffering persecution they 
had not learned mercy, and treated the episcopal clergy 
with more deliberate cruelty than they themselves had ever 
experienced; attacked the churches on the Sunday, and, to 
use the current expression of the time, rabbled both minister 
and congregation. To establish peace between the two 
factions was impossible, and it was not easy to decide which 
was the best entitled to the preference. William would 
have preferred preserving episcopacy, while securing tolera¬ 
tion to the Presbyterians; but he referred the matter to 
the decision of the convention. His chief adviser was sir 
John Dairymple, more commonly known as the master of 
Stair, eloquent and able, but the most unscrupulous‘of men. 
The heads of the party who preserved their attachment to 
James were lord Balcarras and lord Dundee. It soon ap¬ 
peared that the supporters of the revolution greatly pre¬ 
dominated in the convention. The duke of Hamilton was 
chosen president. The city of Edinburgh declared for 
William, but the duke of Gordon held the castle for James. 
Dundee had been assured by William himself that he should 
be unmolested if he remained quiet, even without owning 
the government; and he was at this time so mortified at the 
neglect with which Balcarras and himself were treated by 
James, that he would very probably have acquiesced in the 
decision of the majority, if he had not been treated still 
worse by the convention than by James. He received cer¬ 
tain intelligence of a plot having been laid to assassinate 
him ; and he applied to Hamilton for protection; Hamilton 
put him off, referring him to the convention, and they treated 
his representations with indifference. To save his life he 
retired with a few guards to his country seat; when there, 
he renewed his assurance to the convention that he would 
not oppose the new government, and offered to return to 
the capital; and even to give legal bail for his peaceable 




WILLIAM AND MARY. 


517 


XLV11I.] 

conduct, if they would secure him from assassination. Un¬ 
luckily, at the same time, a messenger was seized bearing 
letters addressed to him by James; Hamilton, with signal 
defiance of law and common sense, treated the existence of 
these letters, of which he was manifestly ignorant, as a 
crime on the part of Dundee, and issued warrants to appre¬ 
hend him; Dundee, in self-defence, fled, raised the standard 
of war, and there was not a man alive so well able to render 
this war formidable. The Highlanders were always difficult 
to manage as soldiers; they had no idea of the restraints of 
military discipline, nor of remaining under arms longer than 
they chose. Victory and defeat were equally fatal to their 
organization. After the one, they dispersed for the sake of 
safety; after the other, they returned home to secure their 
booty. They are often spoken of as inclined to one side or 
the other in politics; but, in fact, they followed their chiefs 
blindly, and their chiefs were divided by every sort of dis¬ 
sension and mutual jealousy. 

At this moment, as at all times since the death of Mon¬ 
trose, Argyle was the great object of terror to the minor 
chieftains. The earl himself, whose father had been executed 
in James’s time, naturally attached himself to William ; and 
those who feared his power, or were in his debt, (and one 
class or the other comprehended nearly every chieftain in 
the Highlands,) as a matter of course took the other side. 
At the summons of Dundee clan after clan flocked to his 
standard, but he was too experienced a soldier to be willing 
to trust much to an army which knew but little of military 
discipline, and which would submit to even less than it 
knew. He sent to James and begged earnestly for a rein¬ 
forcement of regular troops. It was promised ; week after 
week passed by before he was joined by 300 or 400 
Irish infantry, not superior in discipline or appoint¬ 
ments, and far inferior in every other respect to the least 
valuable of the Highlanders. If any one thing could have 
made them more useless than another, it was the character 
of their commander, Cannon, a man with neither energy 
nor ability. William’s blunder was almost equal to James’s. 
To oppose the fiery genius of Dundee he sent Mackay, a 
brave and honest man, but imbued with the narrowest ideas 
of discipline and routine, and destitute of even a single 
spark of that genius which knows when it is better to dis¬ 
pense with rules than to observe them. On the 27th of July, 


A.D 

1689 

1691 


A.D. 

1C89- 

ifjyi. 


518 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

1689, the two armies met at Killiecrankie; Dundee was 
inferior in numbers, but he was obliged to fight without 
delay, because his men were already beginning to return 
home to provide fuel for the winter. It was seven in the 
evening when the Highlanders dropped their plaids and 
charged the English bayonets with their broadswords; 
though there was hardly an hour of daylight left, it was as 
much as was required: indeed the battle was over at the 
first charge. Mackay’s men were fatigued by a long march; 
and, being surprised at an attack so late in the day, they 
fled at once. Mackay himself did all that could be done to 
prevent the defeat from becoming a rout; but would not 
have succeeded had not Dundee himself fallen in the hour 
of victory. His death more than counterbalanced all the 
loss of the other side; with him all James’s hopes in this 
island perished irretrievably, and by his fall all William’s 
anxieties and fears, as he himself pronounced, were at once 
terminated. 

In the pocket of the dead warrior was found a letter from 
James, which would alone have ruined his cause, for it 
announced that a declaration of indemnity, which he was 
preparing to publish, was couched in such terms that he 
could break through it whenever he pleased. But, in 
fact, it was already ruined in the convention, as he had 
previously sent a formal message to that body full of 
threats of the greatest severity against all who did not at 
once return to their allegiance, and signed by Melfort as 
secretary of state, who, besides being personally odious to 
both parties, was by law incapable, as being a Homan 
Catholic, of holding such an office. The Scottish estates, 
undeterred by his menaces, conferred the crown on William 
and Mary: and adopted an instrument which they termed 
“a claim of rights,” to be presented to the new sovereigns, 
and accepted by them at the same time with the government, 
in which the most important article was one by which they 
abolished episcopacy; and the coronation oath, which the 
commissioners were to administer to the sovereigns, was 
framed in accordance with that provision. 





XLIX.J 


WILLIAM AND MARY. 


519 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

WILLIAM AND MARY (CONTINUED). 

We must return to England, where matters did not proceed 
so rapidly. The measures which first occupied the English 
parliament (after the confirmation of the declaration of 
right by a formal enactment, containing an additional 
clause, excluding all Papists, and those who should marry 
Papists, from the throne) had, almost of necessity, related 
to the Church. The High Churchmen, though not willing 
to give up the test act, which excluded Dissenters from 
civil employments, were willing to enlarge the entrance to 
the Church by some relaxation of its discipline ; and Not¬ 
tingham, who, of all statesmen, had the greatest weight 
with them, introduced a toleration bill, drawn up with great 
care, so as to be acceptable to the more moderate Dissenters 
of every denomination; and it passed with the almost una¬ 
nimous assent of both houses. A second bill, called a 
comprehension bill, which would almost have abolished 
dissent by removing all moderately reasonable grounds for 
it, met with less success. It was supported by Compton; 
but it was opposed not merely by the High Church party, 
who were adverse to all concession, and by the ardent Dis¬ 
senters, whom no concession could conciliate; but, though 
more secretly, by even the dissenting ministers of moderate 
opinions, who would have been comprehended by it, but 
from whom, by comprehending them, it threatened to take 
away their occupation, by rendering the difference between 
them and the clergy of the Established Church almost im¬ 
perceptible. 

At the same time the question was raised as to those 
who were to be required to take the new oaths of supremacy 
and allegiance. It was certain that many of the clergy 
would refuse them, and it was therefore proposed not to 
require them of the present holders of any academical or 
ecclesiastical dignity. William himself, who, when taking 
the Scotch coronation oath, had stipulated that the strong 
language in which it was drawn should not bind him to 
be a persecutor, would have been willing to compromise the 
matter, and to consent to this proposal, if the High Church 
party would have consented to a repeal of the test act; 
but his impatience of advice, and his unwillingness ever 


A.D. 

1689. 


AD. 

1689- 

1690. 


520 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

to appear to take it, defeated this plan; for he introduced 
it into his speech to parliament, without even having given 
any one of his ministers the least idea of his intention. It 
was a measure that, in any case, would have required great 
address to carry, but which, when proposed abruptly in 
this manner, was sure to be defeated. Neither the High 
nor even the Low Church party would abandon the test 
act; and, in consequence, all the clergy were required at 
once to take the oath of allegiance on pain of deprivation; 
and great numbers of them were ejected from their benefices 
in consequence of their refusal. 

Before parliament separated justice was done to those 
individuals who had been especially wronged by the arbitrary 
measures of late years. The attainders of lady Lisle, of lord 
Bussell, and of Sidney, were reversed. Some, who were 
alive, were recompensed for the hardships which had been 
inflicted upon them ; and among them, Titus Oates, the 
sentence upon whom had been pronounced by the judges to 
be illegal, though no one thought it unjust, not only had his 
sentence reversed, but was treated with singular favour. 
His crimes were notorious and unparalleled. There was no 
doubt that, by a series of wanton perjuries, he had caused 
the deaths of many innocent and virtuous persons ; but 
there was also no doubt that a sentence of perpetual im¬ 
prisonment was not warranted by law. It was certainly 
quite sufficient to restore him to liberty, especially as he had 
hardly yet suffered a longer imprisonment than that to which 
he might legally have been sentenced; but the commons, 
espousing his cause with undue eagerness because it had 
nearly involved them in a quarrel with the lords, also 
petitioned the crown to grant him a pension, with which 
petition William, to his lasting dishonour, complied, and not 
only conferred a large pension on that foulest of all criminals, 
but, as it has been asserted, rewarded his perjuries further 
with preferment in the Church. 

The king was harassed also with private disputes, for 
which he was himself mainly to blame. In order to obtain 
the consent of the princess Anne to the settlement of the 
crown upon him in preference to her, a very ample provision 
had been promised her; but no care had since been taken 
to carry those promises into execution. The. princess was 
indignant, and, acting under the advice of lady Marlborough, 
an able but artful and intriguing woman, allowed the sub- 





WILLIAM AND MARY. 


521 


XLIX.] 

ject to be brought before the house of commons, who voted 
her an ample revenue for life. This inevitably caused some 
coolness between the two sisters, the queen and the princess ; 
and William, to prevent the resolution of the commons 
from being proceeded with, prorogued the parliament. 

When it met again in November Halifax resigned the 
speakership of the lords, and, as this was looked upon as a 
symptom of the declining power of the Whigs, the Tories 
again brought forward the indemnity bill, which had been 
laid aside the preceding session, but it was thrown out by 
the Whigs ; nor was it till the spring of the subsequent year 
that William was able to carry out his wise and humane 
purpose of leaving no one the plea of fear for opposing his 
government, which he effected at last by an act of grace, 
which had the further advantage, in point of policy, of pro¬ 
ceeding more immediately from himself. At this moment, 
so indignant was he at the unreasonableness of both parties, 
and at their mutual suspicion of himself (for which, however, 
his neglect of any attempt to conciliate either was in a great 
degree to blame), that he actually meditated returning to 
Holland, and leaving Mary to conduct the English govern¬ 
ment ; but he was persuaded by all his ministers to abandon 
that idea, and he substituted for it the plan of going to 
Ireland, and taking the management of the war there upon 
himself. The result of this wiser determination we have 
already seen. He had reason to suspect that, if the house 
of commons divined his intention, they would remonstrate 
against it; and, without communicating his purpose to any 
one but lord Caermarthen, he suddenly dissolved the parlia¬ 
ment. At the same time he dismissed lord Halifax and lord 
Godolphin from their offices. The duke of Shrewsbury 
resigned from sympathy with them. 

Caermarthen was now the only minister whom William 
trusted. He had learnt from Clifford, in the time of Charles 
II., that the easiest way to secure votes in parliament was 
to buy them, and that the members were mostly willing to 
be bought; and he now established a regular market in 
w r hich every one, who set no other value on his vote, might 
sell it to the minister. William (against his inclination, if 
we may trust Burnet) gave his sanction to the practice ; 
and, for the next three-quarters of a century, the secret 
service money in reality decided the greater number of votes 
given by the house of commons. 


A.D. 

1089 — 
1(190. 


A.D. 

161 ) 0 - 

1691. 


522 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

The first measure of the new parliament was, in constitu¬ 
tional principle, the most important in the whole reign. The 
greater part of the taxes had been granted to James, as to 
each preceding sovereign, for life ; but both parties were 
now agreed that this too confiding liberality had more than 
once been the parent of great political evils, by making the 
sovereign too independent of his people. Not, however, to 
press the principle, which was hereafter to be the invariable 
rule of action, too harshly at first, the hereditary revenue of 
the crown and the excise were granted to AVillia.m and Mary 
for their lives ; but the customs were given only for a period 
of four years. It was with a very bad grace that William 
acquiesced in this new arrangement, which he looked upon 
as a mark of personal distrust of himself, and that he at last- 
also permitted his civil list to be charged with an annuity of 
20,000/. a year to the princess Anne, in addition to the 
income settled on her at her marriage. 

William had scarcely set out on his Irish expedition when 
a conspiracy against his government was betrayed to Caer- 
marthen, in time for the chief agents, lord Preston and a 
gentleman named Ashton, to be arrested. Ashton was 
executed, lord Preston was spared ; but the confession, by 
which he purchased his pardon, laid bare the existence of 
very general disaffection, or at least of a very general dispo¬ 
sition to provide for the possibility of a counter-revolution, 
by keeping up connexions with the court at St. Germains. 
The government at the time had no idea of the extent of 
these dealings with the banished king; but we know now 
that some of the Scotch leaders, and some of the principal 
English ministers, especially Shrewsbury, Clarendon, Godol- 
phin, and Marlborough, had conferences with his emissaries, 
and gave them apparently valuable information. Such con¬ 
duct cannot be defended; but it is of a very different dye 
from the crime of dealing with the enemies of one’s country 
in ordinary circumstances, and it may easily be accounted 
for. An age of revolutions unsettles men’s political princi¬ 
ples, and the elders of the existing generation had witnessed 
many revolutions. They had seen a king succeeded by a 
republic; a republic by a protector, a man of great energy 
and ability; and at his death they had seen the sceptre fail 
from the feeble hands of his heir, and the consequent resto¬ 
ration of the old line, and the execution of many of the 
agents in the preceding revolutions. What had happened 







WILLIAM AXD MARY. 


523 


XL1X.] 

so recently was not unlikely to happen again. William’s 
health was very precarious. The princess Anne was as 
feeble in mind as Kichard Cromwell, and was believed to be 
not disinclined to the restoration of her father, whose 
revengeful disposition was well known. In such a state of 
things we can hardly wonder that those who felt that they 
must be the most conspicuous marks for his vengeance 
thought of their own preservation, and wished to secure at 
least his pardon, by professions of good will, and trifling 
acts of civility or of service. 

In William’s mind foreign politics were always of more 
importance than English affairs ; and, at the beginning of 
1691, he went to Holland to concert measures for the 
prosecution of the war against Louis. He had shown great 
political address in securing the alliance of the empire and 
of Spain ; but in military skill he found himself altogether 
overmatched by the duke de Luxembourg, who gave him a 
severe defeat at Steinkirk, and another, in 1692, at Landen, 
though the firmness and fertility of resource which he dis¬ 
played under disaster enabled him to boast that, though he 
had lost so many battles, he still showed the enemy a firmer 
front than ever. 

There is no doubt that his persevering resistance to the 
ambition of the Erench king was of great service to the 
whole of Europe, but his absence from Britain was always a 
time of danger for his government. Marlborough, in the 
course of his dealings with James, proposed to avail himself 
of the discontent that William’s preference of foreigners had 
excited, to embarrass him in such a way that it was not 
impossible that, as he had already threatened, he would 
abandon the kingdom in disgust, rather than yield ; or that, 
on the other hand, if he refused to yield, the kingdom would 
abandon him. Marlborough’s plan was to carry an address 
in both houses of parliament, begging William to dismiss all 
foreigners from his service. He had already gained over 
many members to support this motion, when some of James’s 
more real friends saw reason to suspect that though he was 
sincere in his wish to get rid of William, his object was not 
to place James, but the princess Anne upon the throne. In 
resentment against this supposed treachery they revealed the 
whole business to the earl of Portland. Marlborough was 
dismissed from all his employments; but, So complete was 


A.D. 

1691— 
1692. 


A.I). 

]<»92- 

1G94. 


524 HISTORY OF ENGLANTY |_CH. 

the influence of himself and his wife over the princess, that 
Anne refused to part with lady Marlborough, and, rather 
than do so, gave up her apartments at Whitehall, and retired 
to Sion House. 

James believed that he had other hopes resting on a better 
foundation. Louis had at last consented to attempt an 
invasion of England, which was to be executed bv all -the 
Irish regiments in the French service under Sarsfield, aided 
by 10,000 picked French soldiers under Mareschal Belle- 
fonds ; and a magnificent fleet was prepared, under the com¬ 
mand of Tourville, to convoy the expedition to the British 
shores. Admiral Bussell was in command of the British 
fleet; but he was known to be personally offended with 
William, and he had been one of the earliest to negotiate 
with James. It was believed that he would avoid an action, 
and suffer Tourville to proceed unopposed to his destination ; 
but James rendered it impossible for even those most 
favourable to him to serve him. His promises were all 
couched in terms of the most studied evasion; and Bussell 
now told his principal agent that those evasions must be 
discarded ; that, if he would proclaim an universal amnesty 
in distinct terms, then, and then only, his friends might be 
able to serve him. James’s reply was an announcement of 
his intentions, if he should be restored, which it would have 
been insane in him to promulgate after his restoration had 
been effected. He did indeed promise forgiveness to the 
general body of his subjects ; but the leading men of both 
parties were informed that they had no mercy to expect. 
For Marlborough, and Ormond, and Caermarthen, and Not¬ 
tingham, for Burnet, and Tillotson, who had become arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, on Sancroft’s refusing to take the 
oath of allegiance, there was no pardon. The judges who 
had presided at the trial of Ashton and lord Preston were 
also excepted, with the witnesses who had testified against 
them, and the jury who had convicted them ; and even the 
poor fishermen who, without knowing James, had stopped him 
on the Kentish coast, were equally reserved for punishment. 
So lofty, in spite of all that happened, were James’s ideas of 
his prerogative, and of his divine right to the throne, that he 
actually thought that it would tempt his subjects to restore 
him, to be assured that, when restored, he would hang only 
a few of them, and that the rest would feel as grateful as 














XLIX.] WILLIAM AND MARY. 525 

the stork in the fable was expected to be to the wolf, that 
he had not snapped their heads off when it was so clearly in 
his power to do so. 

William was in Holland, hastening the equipment of the 
Hutch ships to join the English fleet; but the queen, wisely 
perceiving how much James’s declaration must injure his 
cause, reprinted it, and aided in its dissemination. It caused 
universal surprise and consternation among the Jacobites, 
but no one was so surprised or indignant as Russell: from 
this time forth he resolved to be true to William. He him¬ 
self had not been suspected by either the queen or the 
ministers, but others in high command in the fleet had 
been, and it was very difficult for her to know how to pro¬ 
ceed. Wisely and magnanimously she resolved to display 
confidence in all, and to appeal to their honour, and to their 
professional and national spirit. In the middle of May, 
1692, Tourville came sweeping down the Channel and was 
seen off Portland; Russell stood out to sea in pursuit of 
him, and the French admiral retreated to La Hogue. His 
resistance to a superior force was gallant; but the battle was 
not in doubt for a moment. In the action itself but few 
ships were taken; but those which fled were pursued into 
their ports and completely destroyed. When the English 
fleet retired, on the 24th of May, there was hardly a vessel 
left of the armament that had, but a week before, encouraged 
such hopes in the perverse, but ever sanguine, James. Yet 
the nation was discontented, from a general feeling that Russell 
might have done even more, and perhaps might have destroyed 
the harbours themselves. A parliamentary inquiry was in¬ 
stituted : lord Nottingham, the secretary, laid the blame on 
Russell’s obstinacy ; Russell found fault with Nottingham’s 
ignorance of naval affairs. The lords espoused the cause of 
the peer; the commons took part with the commoner; and 
the disagreement of the two houses made all real investi¬ 
gation impracticable. 

The same year, 1692, was also marked with an event 
which, of all others, has left the darkest stain on William’s 
character. The Highlands of Scotland were almost always 
in a state that in England would have been considered full 
of disorder and of danger. Private war between the chieftains 
of different clans was raging incessantly; and, even when there 
was no war, the absence of professed hostility secured no 
clan from the depredations of its neighbours. There was not 


A.D. 

] 692— 
1694. 


A.D. 

1692- 

1694 . 


526 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

even necessarily any hostility implied by such plunder: a 
foray, as an expedition for such a purpose was termed, 
might be merely an ingenious plan to lead to an acquaint¬ 
ance between strangers, or even to reconciliation between 
old friends parted by some temporary difference. To pacify 
the clans had long been a problem of difficulty to those 
statesmen who had the prosperity of Scotland at heart; and 
with this object a large sum of money had been entrusted, a 
year or two before, to lord Breadalbane for the purpose of 
distribution among the chieftains. Lord Breadalbane, how¬ 
ever, was believed to have kept the greater portion of the 
money himself. He was the head of a younger branch of the 
house of Campbell; and the chief of the whole name, Argyle, 
was, as has been already mentioned, an object of terror to the 
whole of the Highlanders who were not dependent on him. 
Next to the Grahams, the chief opponents of the Campbells 
were the Macdonalds, who were also subdivided into several 
smaller clans. Being enemies of Argyle, they were also enemies 
of the government, and the master of Stair conceived the idea 
that the making a terrible example of William’s foes, by 
murdering one of the clans unfavourable to his interests, 
would be more effectual and cheaperMhan bribing them. 
As if the atrocity of such a wholesale massacre were not suf¬ 
ficiently odious, it was rendered more detestable by all the 
infamy that cowardice and treachery could add to it. The 
victims selected were the Macdonalds of Glencoe. Their 
chief had only made his submission to the government on 
the very last day allowed by the law, December 31, 1691: 
in fact, in legal strictness, he had not made it then; for, 
though he had arrived at Tort William on that day to take 
the oaths, no one there was competent to administer them, 
since the governor of the garrison was not a magistrate. 
The governor, however, furnished Macdonald with a letter 
to the sheriff, certifying that he had presented himself for 
the purpose iu due time; and the sheriff administered the 
oaths to him on the 6th of January, and instantly sent a cer¬ 
tificate to the government that he had done so. It was 
determined to disregard this certificate, and to treat the 
chief as a recusant, and William signed the order for the 
destruction of him and his whole clan. 

. In Trance, when Charles IX. commanded a massacre of 
his subjects in cold blood, one of the nobles who received 
.a owed xnandate, replied that he had many soldiers 







XLlX -] WILLIAM AND MARY. 527 

under his command, but not one assassin. Unhappily, in 
Scotland, on this occasion, it was found that the same men 
could be soldiers and assassins too ; nor does history pre¬ 
sent a single instance of an assassination so perfidious. 
Captain Campbell, of Grlenlyon, had married a niece of the 
chieftain, and, on the 1st of February, was sent to his house 
with 120 men, asking for quarters. They were hospitably 
received, and distributed among the clan, and for twelve days 
lived in intimacy with their unsuspecting hosts. The even¬ 
ings were spent in friendly revelry ; the days were devoted 
by Campbell to obtaining a thorough acquaintance with the 
country, and with the passes through the mountains by 
which some might attempt to escape when the deed of blood 
should begin. On the day appointed for the slaughter he 
was to be joined by his commander, Colonel Hamilton, with 
400 men. The night was stormy ; the roads were blocked 
up with fast-falling snow, and Hamilton had not arrived, 
but before daybreak Campbell began his murderous work. 
He himself was lodged in the house of a clansman, named 
Inverrigen. Inverrigen and his whole family, even the chil¬ 
dren, who clung to their murderers’ knees, and begged for 
mercy, were slaughtered among the first. Lindsay, Camp¬ 
bell’s lieutenant, knocked at the chieftain’s door ; Macdonald 
himself was shot while bidding his servants bring out some 
refreshment for his visitors. The assassins stripped his wife, 
tore the rings from her dying fingers with their teeth, and 
left her weltering in her blood. They were disappointed of 
some of their intended victims, who w r ere alarmed by the 
noise of the shots, and escaped. When Hamilton arrived 
in the forenoon there was but one person left alive in the 
whole glen; he was above seventy years old, and that age 
had been fixed as the limit of destruction ; but, disappointed 
at having lost his share in the carnage, Hamilton murdered 
him too, and then vented his rage in burning the houses 
and carrying off the cattle as trophies of his triumph. 

The blood that had been thus ruthlessly shed cried aloud 
for vengeance ; but it was long before it could make itself 
heard at all. It was not till the end of the ensuing year 
that William, at the urgent request of the queen, appointed 
a commission to investigate the matter; and, as the duke of 
Hamilton, the president, died soon afterwards, he let the 
investigation drop, hoping, apparently, to evade the inquiry 
altogether, till at the beginning of 1695, the indignation of 


A.D. 

1692 — 

1694 . 


A.D. 

1693 - 

1695 . 


528 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

the Scotch parliament could no longer be trifled with, and 
a second commission was appointed. Even then the expe¬ 
dient of delay was tried to blunt the wrath of the kinsmen 
of the victims, and the report was reluctantly produced. It 
absolved all but the master of Stair; and the parliament, in 
a series of resolutions founded on the report, left it to the 
royal wisdom to deal with him in such a manner as might 
vindicate the honour of the government; while at the same 
time they requested his majesty to order Campbell, Lindsay, 
and the other officers actually concerned in the massacre, to 
be prosecuted. The fatal warrant had been signed by William, 
both at the top and at the bottom, in a manner only used to 
denote his desire for prompt obedience; but the parliament 
had resolved that this fact did not show that he intended the 
results which had taken place. Unhappily for his fame, he 
chose to prove to all the world that he had intended them. 
He did, indeed, dismiss Stair from his office for a time ; but 
he took many opportunities to show that he had in no 
degree lost his confidence, and his whole conduct towards 
him was a proof that he had consented to the bloody deed 
before, and that he did not in his heart condemn it after the 
execution. 

The war against Louis, prosecuted with such energy as 
William put forth, was very costly, and its expense in¬ 
troduced a total change into the financial system of the 
kingdom. As long as they could do so, the ministers 
endeavoured to meet the charges of the war by increased 
taxation, by raising the land-tax, and imposing new import 
duties; but, with all their ingenuity, the yearly revenue 
fell short of the estimated expenditure by a million of 
money. The crisis was embarrassing; but fortunately there 
had lately been added to the ministry a man fully equal 
to deal with it, Charles Montague, than whom no financier 
of greater abilities, or more original genius, ever sat in the 
house of commons. Much of his success he himself at¬ 
tributed to his practice of giving audience to the very 
wildest projectors, from the most fanciful of whose spe¬ 
culations he at times derived sound practical hints. He 
now brought forward a proposal for a loan of a million 
to be raised by life annuities, imposing fresh duties to 
meet the interest. This was the origin of the national 
debt, which, having been long looked on as an incubus, 
pressing on the resources of the state with intolerable 




WILLIAM AND MALY. 


529 


XLIX.] 

weight, and certain ultimately to overwhelm them, is now a.d. 
more justly considered a salutary system, giving the people 1693- 
in general a greater interest in the welfare of the nation, 
by providing the economical and industrious classes with 
a safe investment for the proceeds of their economy and 
industry. 

_ t' 

The next question that occupied the attention of parlia¬ 
ment was the reform of the house of commons. It was 
felt, almost universally, that the members were too much 
under the influence of the crown, an evil which was attri¬ 
buted to two causes: firstly, to the vast number of place¬ 
men, removable at pleasure, who had seats in the house ; 
secondly, to the power, which the sovereign possessed, of 
keeping the same parliament in existence for an indefinite 
period; and the two parties differed as to which cause should 
be removed. The Tories proposed to exclude placemen 
from the house; the Whigs proposed to limit the duration 
of each parliament; while many statesmen of both parties 
thought that no reform could be effectual which did not 
combine both those measures. Accordingly, two bills were 
brought forward : a place bill; and one to limit the duration 
of each parliament to three years, and from its object called 
the triennial bill. Both propositions were viewed with 
great dislike by William, who conceived that they trenched 
on his prerogative. He more than once refused his assent 
to them, and the place bill was ultimately thrown aside; 
but, in 1094, the triennial bill was passed; and the end of 
the year 1696 was fixed for the dissolution of the existing 
parliament. 

But about the same time an event took place which, in 
its ultimate effect, did more towards reforming the house 
of commons than a dozen bills framed with that express 
object could have effected. At the beginning of 1695 the 
commons refused to renew the licensing act, by the pro¬ 
visions of which nothing could be published without the 
sanction of an officer appointed to examine all new works. 

The law expired in May, and within a fortnight of its 
expiration was published the first real newspaper (for the 
“ Gazette,” being edited by a clerk in the office of the secretary 
of state, contained nothing beyond what the minister chose 
the nation to know). A similar paper had, indeed, been 
published in the latter part of the reign of Charles II., but 
had been speedily suppressed. Now, however, before the 

M in 


A.D. 

1693 - 

1696. 


530 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

end of the year, no less than ten newspapers were in active 
circulation, small and meagre, it is true, when compared 
with the vast mass, often containing the matter ol an 
octavo volume in a single number, which is now daily laid 
upon the breakfast-table ; but ample and all-important in 
the eyes of a generation which, at the beginning of the 
year, had no means whatever of obtaining the information 
thus afforded. 

At the beginning of the year 1693, a fresh declaration 
was issued from St. Germains. In England the Jacobites 
were divided into Compounders, who, though they desired 
the restoration of James, wished it to be accompanied with 
guarantees for the civil and religious liberties of all classes 
of his subjects, and Noncompouuders, who had no idea 
that any one had a right to make conditions with the Lord’s 
anointed. The Compounders had a great majority in 
England; but the councillors at St. Germains were chiefly 
of the other party. The Erench ministers, however, had 
by this time learnt enough of the real state of England to 
feel sure that the counsels of the Noncompounders would 
never bring about the restoration for which they hoped; 
and Louis seriously advised James to adopt a milder and 
more conciliatory line of conduct than he had as yet thought 
consistent with his dignity.. Accordingly lord Middleton, 
one of the ablest and most moderate of the Compounders, 
was invited to France to assume the post of secretary of 
state in conjunction with Melfort. His presence at James’s 
court gave William some uneasiness at first, and though 
Middleton could not prevail on James to adopt the favourite 
expedient of the English Jacobites, by resigning his crown 
in favour of the priuce of Wales, and allowing him to be 
bred up as a Protestant, he did persuade him to issue a 
declaration containing an entire amnesty, and ample pro¬ 
mises of consenting to every measure which the parliament 
might think necessary for the security of the civil and 
religious liberties of the kingdom. But men had now learnt 
to distrust James’s sincerity (and they had reason to do 
so; for, in fact, Melfort wrote at the same time to Home 
that this promised amnesty was meant as a delusion) ; and 
this declaration gained over no party in England, while it 
disgusted his partisans in Ireland, who looked upon it as an 
open desertion of them. 





WILLIAM AND MARY. 


531 



CHAPTER L. 

WILLIAM AND MARY (CONTINUED). 

At the same time changes were taking place in England, a.c. 
which rendered the chance of his restoration more impro- 1693— 
bable than ever. Of late years William had been influenced 
chiefly by the Tories, but they had become very unpopular. 

Lord Caermarthen, their chief leader, was very generally 
accused of corruption. Lord Nottingham was despised, 
because of the scanty success of our naval affairs, which 
were chiefly under his management. Another Tory, a 
Mr. Harley, who, in the next reign, rose to be prime 
minister, was active in opposition to many of William’s 
favourite measures, especially to the naturalization of 
foreigners, and to the increase of the army; while these 
measures were warmly advocated by the Whigs, one of 
whom, Montague, was the most eloquent defender of his 
conduct, and of his principles. Moreover, the Tories were 
a divided body, when compared with the steady union 
which bound together the leading Whigs. Shrewsbury, 
Somers, Montague, Russell, and a few others, the leaders 
of that party, were known by the name of the Junto, and 
acted in close and invariable concert; and the king now 
placed all the power in their hands. It was on Montague, 
as chancellor of the exchequer, that the chief burden of the 
administration fell, as the principal difficulty was to raise 
supplies for the war; and we may learn to appreciate the 
wisdom of his general policy by recollecting that many of 
the taxes and of the measures which he then introduced, 
such, for instance, as the stamp duties, and the duty on 
hired carriages, have subsisted to the present time. He 
also established the Bank of England, on the condition that 
the shareholders should lend the government a large sum 
at a low rate of interest; and, by thus giving the capitalists 
of the country a direct concern in the maintenance of the 
revolution, he established a principle, which, in subsequent 
years, more than once proved the salvation of the kingdom. 

There were other difficulties for Montague to grapple 
with. The metal of the coinage was pure; but the mode 
of coining, which had never been altered since the time of . 
Edward I., afforded such facilities for diminishing the value 
of each coin by clipping and paring, that it was believed 

Mm2 


532 * HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [oil. 

a.d. that the whole sum in circulation in the kingdom was not 
1094— rea lity of one-half of its ostensible value. Montague 
,69 °* called in the old coinage, and issued a new one; but, at 
first, the Mint M r as unable to produce the money required 
with sufficient rapidity. Luckily, just at this crisis, the 
office of master of the Mint fell vacant, and Montague 
bestowed it on sir Isaac Newton. His mighty genius, as 
capable of practical application to minute details as to the 
most vast and sublime calculations, speedily put an end to 
the old delays of the establishment. The weekly issue of 
coin was raised eightfold; and by the beginning of August, 
1696, all difficulty and distress had passed away. 

We must return to the progress of the war. Ever since 
the battle of La Hogue a descent on the French coast had 
been a favourite project with those who fancied that they 
had learnt, from that battle, that our naval force was the 
arm to which we ought to trust for important success 
against France. In his speech to parliament, in November, 
1692, William (not very prudently, considering that his 
language was sure to be known to, and taken as a warning 
by the enemy) promised that such a descent should be 
attempted. At the beginning of 1693 a squadron was 
collected, and several thousand men were embarked, avowedly 
for the purpose of attacking Brest; but, for some reason 
or other, the expedition was not proceeded with. In 
November Benbow sailed with a considerable squadron, 
and bombarded St. Malo, but did not think himself strong 
enough to attack any more important place. In the spring 
of 1694 a squadron was again prepared to attack Brest, 
and a considerable land force was embarked on board of it, 
under Talmash, than whom no officer in the service, except 
Marlborough, had a higher reputation ; but the enterprise 
wholly failed. It was delayed for some weeks by contrary 
winds. The former attempts had put the French on their 
guard; and the ministers had been so imprudent as to 
consult Frenchmen with reference to this very expedition. 
When the troops landed they found the place so strongly 
fortified as to be almost unassailable. Talmash himself was 
mortally wounded, and his men were forced to retire with 
considerable loss. It is a singular specimen of the manner 
in which the statesmen at home sought to keep in with 
James, that the day before the expedition was intended to 
sail, Marlborough wrote James an account of its object; 





WILLIAM AND MARY. 


533 


L.] 

carefully withholding his information as long as it could 
be of any use, and yet giving it in time to enable him¬ 
self to make a merit of it, if the Stuarts should ever be 
restored. 

Mary was several years younger than her husband, and 
endowed with a much stronger constitution; but, at the end 
of the year 1694, she was attacked by the measles, and 
died after a short illness; and William was for some time 
so affected by her loss as to be quite unable to attend to 
business. Almost at the same time another death took 
place, which had even a greater influence over his fortunes, 
that of Luxembourg, who was succeeded in the command of 
the army of the Netherlands by Villeroy, a favourite of 
Louis’s, brave as are all the nobles of that gallant land, but 
destitute of military skill; and the knowledge of his inca¬ 
pacity determined William to assume the offensive in the 
next campaign. He decided on attacking Namur; the cap¬ 
ture of that fortress in 1692 was the exploit, of all others, 
of which Louis was most proud, and which his flatterers had 
celebrated with the most exaggerated panegyric. William 
now retaliated on Villeroy the manoeuvres by which Luxem¬ 
bourg had outgeneralled himself; and, after some skilful 
marches and countermarches to conceal his object till the 
last moment, he left the prince de Vaudemont with a strong 
detachment to watch and amuse Villeroy, and arrived so 
suddenly before Namur, that marshal Boufflers had scarcely 
time to throw himself with a few regiments into the town 
before its blockade was completed. Villeroy, whose force 
was very superior in numbers, prepared to attack De Vaude¬ 
mont, and w r rote letters to Louis full of boastful promises 
of a certain victory; but his attack failed through the 
cowardice of Louis’s favourite son, the duke de Maine, who 
commanded the left wing of the French army, and Namur 
was taken. The loss of the place was by itself sufficiently 
mortifying; but the cause of the disaster, which, however, 
the courtiers concealed as long as they could, was so much 
more painful, that when Louis at last discovered it, for the 
first and only time in his reign, he forgot his usual majestic 
dignity, and walked sulkily about his palace without finding 
anv one on whom to vent his wrath, till he came upon an 
unhappy footman pilfering some biscuits as he was removing 
a dessert, when to the astonishment of the lords and ladies 
who followed in his train, he ran after the terrified culprit, 


a.d. 
1695— 
1697- 


534 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. loaded him with opprobrious epithets, broke his cane over 
1G05— p- g shoulders, and pursued him, still punching him with the 
fragment, all through the passages. 

While William was reaping glory in Flanders, a plot was 
forming at home to assassinate him. One plot had been 
detected a year or two before, and Grandval, the assassin, 
declared that he had been instructed by Barbesieux, the 
French minister; and that James had, in person, expressed 
to him his approval of the design. Nor, though William 
published his confession, did the court of France take any 
steps to clear itself from so foul an accusation. The death 
of Mary had made them more eager to compass the death of 
William ; and a large band of conspirators agreed to waylay 
his coach and shoot him. James and the duke of Berwick 
came to Calais with a considerable body of troops ready to 
cross the Channel the moment that a beacon fire should 
give them notice that the deed was done; but the plot was 
betrayed, and the chief conspirators taken and executed. 
One person who was implicated was sir John Fenwick, who 
escaped at the time, and kept himself concealed till his 
friends got one of the two witnesses, on whom the prosecu¬ 
tion depended, out of the way. He could not therefore be 
legally convicted; but, as William had a personal dislike to 
him, on account of his having behaved with insolence to 
queen Mary, he procured a bill of attainder to be passed 
against him, under which he was executed, being the last 
persou who has suffered by such a mode of procedure. 

The French, in common with the rest of Europe, were 
becoming weary of the war; and, in the spring of 1697, 
Louis made proposals of peace. William listened to them 
willingly; and, in spite of the opposition of Spain and Ger¬ 
many, a congress' was opened at Byswick, a village near the 
Hague, where William had a country house, in which the 
conferences took place. After a long and tedious negotia¬ 
tion, peace was effected; it hardly answered all the ends 
which William had proposed to himself in first forming the 
alliance against France, but Louis restored most of the 
conquests which he had made since the peace of Nimeguen, 
and recognized William as king of Great Britain, giving bis 
royal word neither directly nor indirectly to assist his ene¬ 
mies, nor to favour, in any way, any conspiracies or secret 
rebellions which might arise in England. In England the 
news of the peace was received with great joy, and William’s 





L.] WILLIAM AND MARY. 535 

reception on his return almost resembled a triumphal pro¬ 
cession. 

The country this year had a singular visitor in the person 
of Peter, the founder, as he may be called, of the Russian 
empire. ITe was travelling in different countries to enlarge 
his experience; and came to England with the especial 
object of acquainting himself with naval affairs ; for he was 
already contemplating the building of a fleet in the sea of 
Azoph, with which to attack the Turkish empire. Those 
who conversed with him could not but be sensible of his 
courage, of his abilities, though of these they hardly appre¬ 
ciated the extent, and of his perseverance ; but they were 
so much more struck with his capriciousness and his bru¬ 
tality, which he frequently inflamed almost to madness by 
drinking large quantities of spirits, that the reflections 
bishop Burnet made upon him were, that those who judged 
by a single example, might be led to think man a very con¬ 
temptible thing in the sight of God, when such a person as 
Peter had such vast multitudes put, as it were, under his 
feet, exposed to his restless jealousy and savage temper. 

The peace, however desirable for William, as apparently 
securing his title against all attempts from Prance, did yet, 
in its consequences, cause him great personal annoyance, in 
consequence of the decision of the house of commons, that 
it was no longer necessary to keep on foot such a force as 
he himself wished to maintain. Part of his disappointment 
was owing to his own habitual reserve, as he would not 
declare the number of troops which he desired, to keep 
under arms, till the house was committed to a much smaller 
number ; and at last the force to be maintained was fixed at 
10,000 men; and this resolution, of itself sufficiently dis¬ 
tasteful to the king, was made more so by an additional 
clause, that the troops which remained should consist wholly 
of his natural-born English subjects. This was intended to 
compel the dismissal of his Dutch troops, in accordance 
with the promise which he had voluntarily made on their 
first introduction ten years before; but he always looked 
upon them as more his own countrymen than the English ; 
and, though he gave a formal consent to the -resolution of 
the parliament, he hoped to find some means of evading this 
obnoxious clause. Pie even condescended, at last, to ad¬ 
dress a request to the commons “ out of consideration to 
him, to find a way for continuing them longer in his service,” 


A.D. 

1697— 

1698. 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


536 



a.d. and assured them that “lie would take it very kindly;” 
an( ^ w h en he found this entreaty unavailing, he showed 
more anger than on any other occasion in his life, and swore 
loudly that if he had a son his Dutch guards should not 
quit him. He revived his old idea of returning to Holland, 
and putting the English government in commission; and 
even threatened one of his nobles with bringing about the 
restoration of the Stuarts in the person of the youthful 
prince of Wales. 

He had troubles also in Ireland and in Scotland: in 
Ireland principally from the unreasonable jealousy of the 
English parliament, who petitioned him to discourage the 
Irish manufacture of w r oollen stuffs; and in Scotland from 
the ruin of a colony which a Scotch company, under the 
guidance of an enterprising merchant, named Paterson, tried 
to establish at Darien, and which was expected to enrich the 
whole kingdom : but the Spaniards complained of the new 
settlement as an invasion of their territory, and attacked it 
with great vigour; the English colonies in North America, 
which were beginning to flourish, were also jealous of it; 
and, in the end, it was entirely ruined, to the great disap¬ 
pointment and indignation of the whole Scotch people. 
William himself was more affected by an attack made on an 
exercise of his prerogative by the English parliament. On 
the establishment of his authority in Ireland very large 
estates were declared to have become forfeited to the crow n 
by those w ho persisted in their allegiance to James. On 
principle, they were in the power of the sovereign; but be 
had promised to be guided in the disposal of them by the 
parliament. As, however, the parliament, in the several 
sessions that had taken place since their forfeiture, had 
taken no steps relating to them, he, of his own authority, 
made enormous grants from them to his favourites, chiefly 
foreigners, such as lord Portland, lord Albemarle, and lord 
Athlone, and to his mistress, lady Orkney, whose brother 
he had likewise raised to the peerage as earl of Jersey. 
The value of the grants was greatly exaggerated by those 
who brought the matter before parliament; but the Dutch 
were so universally hated that all parties agreed in a bill to 
resume them, and to apply the proceeds of them to the pay¬ 
ment of the public debts, to which William, though in great 
anger, felt himself compelled to assent; but when he found 
that, emboldened by their success, they were preparing an 









L.] WILLIAM AND MARY. 537 

address to beg him to remove all foreigners from his coun¬ 
cils, he prorogued them ; and when they next met important 
questions of foreign politics engrossed their attention. 

In the interval, however, he made a spirited demonstra¬ 
tion in favour of his young ally, Charles XII. of Sweden, 
w r ho had succeeded to his throne during the negotiations at 
Bvswick, which were conducted under the mediation of his 
father, and afterwards of himself. Pie was very young, and 
as no one suspected his military talents, Peter of Kussia 
stirred up the kings of Poland and Denmark to join him in 
an attack upon his territories ; but William sent sir George 
Hooke, at the head of a powerful fleet, into the Baltic, who 
bombarded Copenhagen, and, by this one blow, dissolved the 
coalition before Charles had suffered any evil effect from it, 
and extended the influence by this plain manifestation of 
the power of England. 

The succession to the Spanish throne, which was likely 
to be soon vacant, as the health of the king of Spain, 
Charles II., was evidently failing, now began to attract the 
attention of all the European princes, and of none more 
than William. Charles had neither sons nor brothers, and 
as the queen of Louis XIV., Maria Teresa, had been his 
eldest sister, her eldest son was the natural heir of that vast 
monarchy, but Louis, on his marriage, had solemnly re¬ 
nounced all claims on Spain for all his children ; the next heir 
was the elector of Bavaria, the grandson of Charles’s second 
sister, Margaret, who had been married to the emperor 
Leopold; the third claimant was the emperor Leopold him¬ 
self, in his character of grandson of Philip III. His claim 

I he transferred to his second son, the archduke Charles. If 
the renunciation of the French princes was to have its 
, just effect, the elector of Bavaria had indisputably the best 
right to the succession ; but it w T as soon apparent that 
Louis did not intend to be bound by the stipulations which 
he had made at the time of his marriage ; and that he che¬ 
rished the idea of obtaining a portion of the Spanish do¬ 
minions for Philip, duke of Anjou, the second son of the 
dauphin ; and with this view he consented to a treaty of 
partition, the terms of which were settled by him and 
William, and which provided that the Bavarian prince 
should become king of Spain, of the Netherlands, and of the 
Spanish possessions in the West Indies and in America ; 
the French prince was to have the Two Sicilies, and the 


A.D. 

1700. 




538 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cil. 

a.d. archduke Charles the Milanese; hut this treaty, and a will, 
1W>8 executed by Charles II., leaving the whole of his dominions 
to the elector, was nullified by the death of the elector the 
next year: and on this event Louis consented to execute a 
second partition treaty, which gave the archduke the share 
that had been allotted to the elector ; and the Milanese, as 
well as the Two Sicilies, to the French prince. But at the 
very time that Louis signed this treaty he was meditating 
the infraction of it. The idea of the dismemberment of 
their monarchy was odious to every Spaniard, and especially 
to Charles II. himself, whom it had influenced to make his 
first will in favour of the elector, and who was now easily 
induced by the French ambassador, and by the French parti¬ 
sans among his own ministers, to make a will, bequeathing 
the whole of his dominions to Philip. It had scarcely been 
signed, when, in November, 1700, Charles died, and Philip 
was proclaimed king of Spain, and was acknowledged as 
such by William. The prudence with which William had 
acted in negotiating these treaties, though sufficiently clear 
at the present day, was much disputed at the time; and, in 
this instance again, the manner in which he had acted 
greatly contributed to excite the opponents of his measures 
to find fault with the actions themselves. He had con¬ 
ducted the negotiations himself without consulting any of 
his ministers, except lord Portland and lord Jersey ; and 
had induced lord Somers, as chancellor, to affix the great 
seal to blank powers as a legal authority to the negotiations ; 
a step which was contrary to every principle of the consti¬ 
tution: and this unconstitutional and impolitic conduct 
afforded the Tory party a handle for attacking the ministry, 
of which they made a prompt and unscrupulous use ; and 
their leaders in the commons, at the beginning of the year 
1701, impeached Somers, Portland, Montague, who had 
lately been created lord Halifax, and admiral Bussell, who 
had been made lord Orford ; but in the preliminary pro¬ 
ceedings a quarrel arose between the commons and the 
lords, and the prosecution in consequence was suffered to 
drop. 

The duke of Gloucester, the son of princess Anne, and 
heir presumptive to the crown, had lately died, and in con¬ 
sequence it became necessary to provide for the succession, 
in the event, which now seemed probable, of the princess 
dying childless; and it was settled on the princess Sophia, 







WILLIAM AND MARY. 


539 


I,] 

the wife of the elector of Hanover, and granddaughter of a.d 
James I.; while the parliament wisely took advantage of 1 701 — 
the opportunity thus afforded them of introducing into the 1 ^ 02, 
act of settlement several provisions necessary for securing 
the kingdom’s general independence of the foreign con¬ 
nexions in which it seemed likely to become permanently 
involved, the purer administration of justice, and the cur¬ 
tailment of the undue influence of the crown. 

Though he had acknowledged Philip as king of Spain, 
William had endeavoured to prevail on the parliament to 
prepare for a fresh war with Prance, but met with no 
success, till Louis himself assisted him by an act of the 
most impolitic faithlessness. In September, 1701, king 
James died at St. Germains; and, in open violation of the 
stipulations and of the treaty of Eyswick, Louis imme¬ 
diately acknowledged his son, the prince of Wales, as king 
of England. This studied insult united all parties in the 
kingdom in support of William. Eoyal addresses to him 
were voted by both houses of parliament, alliances with 
powers unfriendly to France were eagerly formed, acts 
abjuring and attainting the prince of Wales were passed, 
and vigorous preparations for war were being made, when, 
at the beginning of 1702, William broke his collar-bone by 
a fall from his horse; and so enfeebled was his constitu¬ 
tion, that this accident, usually of such a trifling character, 
proved fatal. On the 8th of March he died, in the fifty- 
second year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. 

If we measure William by the standard of his achieve¬ 
ments, there is no doubt that he must be considered a very 
great man. Certainly he was favoured by circumstances. 

Yet while only the ruler, and not the absolute ruler, of but 
a small state, he opposed a formidable barrier to the ambi¬ 
tion of Louis XIV.; he acquired and maintained the sove- 
reigntv of a kingdom far more important than his native 
country, and he governed that kingdom in a way that very 
greatly extended its influence and his own renown. 

As a general, though possessed of the most indomitable 
courage, he never attained very eminent skill; and during 
the greater part of his career he was opposed to the most 
consummate commanders of Europe; but as a statesman 
he has had few equals. Nor is it easy to mention any 
triumph of diplomacy more brilliant than that which crowned 
his exertions, when he induced the principal Eoman Ca- 


540 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

1702 


[CH, 

tholic powers of Europe to look with a complacency, which 
alone could render it successful, on the enterprise which he, 
a Protestant, was undertaking against a Roman Catholic 
prince, and to acquiesce in his fixing so powerful a nation 
as Great Britain for ever in the Protestant faith and 
interest. 

To these kingdoms he rendered most important and durable 
service, securing to them the full and permanent enjoyment 
of civil and religious liberty, which, without him, was in 
no small danger of disappearing from the face of the earth ; 
yet, in some respects, it is as the ruler of these kingdoms 
that he appears in the light the least advantageous to his 
reputation. He always considered them as of secondary 
importance; he valued his sovereignty over them chiefly 
as giving him additional means of opposing the designs of 
Louis with success; he made 'their domestic interests 
always subservient to his views of foreign policy; and he 
invariably showed a preference for his original fellow'- 
countrymen, the Dutch, over his new subjects, the English. 
His conduct in so doing was neither just nor politic; it 
led him on more than one occasion into grievous errors; 
and, by the jealousy which it created in the British parlia¬ 
ment, it often greatly impeded the successful prosecution 
of his designs. His manner, singularly ungracious at all 
times, increased this jealousy, and often excited a prejudice 
against his measures, which of themselves they would not 
have provoked. Yet these blemishes, serious though one 
or two of them may be, ought not to blind us to his talents, 
nor to render us ungrateful for his services. Those talents 
were great, various, and exerted with great perseverance for 
the general benefit of Europe, and especially for the benefit 
of the inhabitants of these islands ; those services, which 
by that persevering exertion of those talents he did render, 
have been felt ever since his time, and we may safely pre¬ 
dict will be felt, as long as Englishmen have the spirit to 
appreciate the blessings of the secure exercise of a pure 
religion, and the undisturbed enjoyment of a well-regulated 













LI.] 


ANNE. 


541 


CHAPTER LI 


ANNE. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Leopold. 


France. 
Louis XIV. 

Spain. 
Philip V. 


Prussia. 
Frederic I. 

Russia. 

Peter. 

Pope. 

Clement XI. 


Joseph I. . . 1705 

Charles VI. . . 1711 


Sweden. 
Charles XII. 


William was succeeded by the princess Anne, the second a.d. 
daughter of James. II., by his first wife. She was now in H02. 
the thirty-eighth year of her age, and had been married 
many years to prince George of Denmark, by whom she 
had seventeen children, who were now all dead. She had 
been on very cool terms with the late king during nearly 
the whole of his reign; and, as he was not very popular 
with the generality of the nation, her accession was hailed 
with a very general joy. 

The English parliament granted her the revenue of the 
civil list for life, settled a large revenue on prince George, in 
the event of his surviving her, and voted large sums for carry¬ 
ing on the intended war. The Scottish parliament granted 
the taxes which she requested, and empowered her to name 
commissioners to treat of the union between the two 
kingdoms, a wise and necessary measure, which had been 
several times proposed, and which had occupied as much 
of the attention of the late king as he could spare from 
his foreign policy; and though Ireland was not restored to 
Tierfect tranquillity, yet there seemed ho reason to appre¬ 
hend any difficulties to the queen’s government from that 
quarter. 

William had died in the middle of preparations for war; 
and the queen’s first speech to her parliament announced 
that she felt compelled by the conduct of France in pursuing 
a constant policy of aggrandizement, and by Louis’s ac¬ 
knowledgment of her brother as king, to show that the 
policy of England was not altered by the change of rulers ; 
and, in the very week after her accession, she sent Marl¬ 
borough to Holland to assure the Dutch estates, that she 
intended fully to adhere to the alliances which William had 
formed ; while, with a view to the vigorous prosecution of 





542 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



d. the war, in which Marlborough was to have the command 
of the English army, several changes were made in the 
ministry; lord Godolphin being placed at the head of the 
treasury, at the express desire of Marlborough, who re¬ 
presented it as indispensable to his conduct of the ensuing 
campaign that he should be able to rely on the punctuality 
of remittances from England to pay the troops. 

At the beginning of May war was formally declared by 
England, Holland, and Germany against France and Spain; 
and the next week Marlborough assumed the command of 
the allied armies in the Netherlands. He found himself at 
the head of 60,000 men; and, though always cautious to 
avoid unnecessary risk, he would have thought himself 
strong enough to undertake offensive operations on a large 
scale, had it not been for the timidity of the Dutch govern¬ 
ment, which sadly fettered his free action, and compelled 
him to limit his measures to the siege of some towns, all of 
which were successively taken, but all of which, except 
Liege, were of comparatively small importance. 

At the same time a powerful fleet, under sir George 
Hooke, was sent to Spain, with a military force, commanded 
by the duke of Ormond, intended to destroy Cadiz. The 
attempt on that town failed; but, as the British were 
retiring, they heard that a large French and Spanish fleet, 
convoying a number of galleons, laden with an immense 
treasure, had taken shelter in Vigo Bay. They forced their 
way into the bay, and wholly destroyed every vessel, ac¬ 
quiring an enormous booty, and inflicting a most serious 
injury on the enemy, with the loss of a very few men. 

The queen was a person of such a feeble mind as to be 
always under the dominion of some favourite; and she had, 
as has been already mentioned, contracted a friendship with 
lady Marlborough, of so enthusiastic a character on her 
part, that she fancied the ordinary maintenance of her rank 
an impediment to it, and insisted that in their common 
intercourse they should both lay aside their titles, and know 
one another only as Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman, 
while Marlborough was usually spoken of in their corre¬ 
spondence as Mr. Freeman. Mrs. Freeman’s influence 
was a fortunate event for the kingdom, as it naturally led 
to her husband having the entire management of the war. 
On his return from this campaign Anne made him a duke, 
and granted him a pension of 5000Z. a year on the post- 















L1-] AJs T NE. 543 

office daring her own life. She even wished to annex the 
annuity for ever to the title; but the commons refused to 
acquiesce, though afterwards, in the exultation caused by 
the battle of Blenheim, they gave effect to her desire. 

The military operations of the next year were also con¬ 
fined to a few sieges, conducted by Marlborough with 
invariable success; but so annoyed was he at the constant 
interference of the Dutch with his plans, by which he was 
continually prevented from reaping the natural fruit of his 
triumphs, that he seriously meditated throwing up his 
command, and returning to England. Fortunately, however, 
the issue of these two campaigns increased their confidence 
in him; and, in the beginning of 1704, they consented to 
his transferring the scene of action from the Low Countries 
to the banks of the Rhine and of the Danube, where the 
French were preparing to join the elector of Bavaria, and, 
if unopposed, seemed to threaten the safety of Vienna. 

On the 19th of May he began his march towards Ger¬ 
many, and it was soon seen how sagaciously his plans had 
been laid, as the mere knowledge of his advance paralyzed 
the Bavarian troops, and suspended their march towards 
the Austrian capital, though none of the enemy could as 
yet divine his real intentions. At the beginning of June 
lie met the great imperial general, prince Eugene of Savoy, 
and with him concerted the subsequent operations of the 
campaign. Steadily and rapidly he pressed forwards, re¬ 
ceiving reinforcements on his way, forced the camp of the 
elector of Bavaria at Donawerth, and gave him a severe 
beating, and on the 10th of August crossed the Danube, 
and came in front of the French army. He had just been 
joined by prince Eugene, and their united force amounted 
to about 52,000 men. The French and Bavarians, com¬ 
manded by marshal Tallard, were rather more numerous. 
They had also the advantage of a strong position, around 
the village of Blenheim, from which we have named the 
victory that ensued; while the French speak of it as the 
battle of Hochstedt, from a small town in the English line 
of advance. Tallard had a high reputation, and was a 
skilful officer; but he was taken by surprise by the attack, 
which many of the officers in the allied army thought too 
dangerous to be attempted with prudence. It was the 
13th of August wdien the British and imperial troops began 
to move before daybreak; yet so difficult was the ground 


A.D. 

1702— 
1703. 


1704. 


544 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

before lord Cutts, 
heroes, began the 
attack on Blenheim. The enemy had a numerous artillery, 
skilfully served. The carnage was terrific; but nothing 
could resist the terrible impetuosity of the English bat¬ 
talions. In one part of the battle the gallantry of the Irish 
brigade, in the service of Louis, gained a temporary ad¬ 
vantage; but Marlborough was every where himself; he 
hastened to the spot, and by his presence of mind and 
personal exertions restored the fight. At last, after a 
ceaseless struggle of more than four hours, the Erench 
were broken in every part of the field. Marlborough brought 
up the whole of his cavalry for a final charge, and the rout 
was complete. The last event of the day, after sunset, was 
the surrender of the troops posted in Blenheim itself, who, 
long after their comrades had been defeated, maintained a 
gallant resistance, till they were surrounded and over¬ 
powered by superior numbers. More than one of the 
regiments burnt their colours, and buried their arms, that 
they might not fall into the hands of their enemies; but 
the best proof of their bravery was to be found in the 
respect paid to it by the conquerors. There had never 
been a more complete victory: 12,000 of the enemy lay 
dead on the field; numbers, in attempting to flee, were 
drowned in the Danube ; 10,000, with Tallard himself, were 
made prisoners of war; while the whole of their baggage 
and artillery also became the prize of the conquerors. 

The consequences of such a victory could not fail to be 
important; it encouraged the king of Prussia to join the 
alliance, and emboldened the emperor to make more vigorous 
exertions in Italy; it led also to the reduction of many 
strong fortresses which afforded winter-quarters for the 
army; and, if it did not unite parties in England, it com¬ 
pelled the opponents of the government to silence. 

A singular accident led to the acquisition of an advantage 
almost equally considerable in the south of Europe. Sir 
George Booke, on his return from a fruitless expedition up 
the Mediterranean, surprised Gibraltar; and, with a few 
British sailors, and a small body of troops under the com¬ 
mand of the prince of Hesse d’Armstadt, made himself 
master of a fortress, which since his time has more than 
once proved impregnable to the most formidable attack that 
power and skill could bring against it. 


A.D. 

1704. 


in front of them, that midday was past 
the bravest in an armv where all were 


ANNE. 


545 


LI.] 

The campaign of the next year was comparatively unim- a.d. 
portant in the Netherlands, but in Spain was signalized by 1705— 
events which for a while appeared to promise great results. 17 ° 6, 
The earl of Peterborough, a man of extraordinary talents for 
war, though rather for war carried on in an irregular and 
partisan fashion than according to scientific rules, landed 
in Spain with a small army of about 5000 men, in the 
middle of June. He found himself as much impeded by 
the timidity of the archduke Charles and his advisers, as 
Marlborough was by the Dutch deputies. He was received 
with enthusiasm in Valencia, and would at once have 
advanced upon Madrid, had he not been overruled. He 
was compelled to remain on the coast, and to attack Barce¬ 
lona. According to every rule of war that town was unas¬ 
sailable, except by a force four times greater than he had 
under his command ; but he took it in less than a month. 

Other important towns submitted without attempting to 
make resistance. By the beginning of 1706 he had ex¬ 
tended his conquests to Valencia. Lord Galway, who com¬ 
manded on the other side of Spain, though destitute of any 
great military skill, was roused by emulation of his successes 
to some degree of energy, and advanced into the heart of 
Spain, and occupied Madrid. Peterborough wished to join 
him, and the two armies, if united, might have been able to 
maintain themselves in the capital; but Charles refused to 
consent to such an advance, and the duke of Berwick had 
driven Galway out of Madrid before he could be induced to 
alter bis decision. Peterborough in disgust threw up his 
command ; and, though one or two gleams of success shone 
* for a moment on the arms of the archduke, in reality all 
chance of his permanent success disappeared with his rejec¬ 
tion of the counsels of his invincible champion. 

The year 1706, however, opened with another great victory 
in the Netherlands. Though the French had lost several 
considerable towns in 1705, and though Marlborough, in 
July, by an admirable series of movements, had forced their 
lines, and established himself in strength in their rear, yet 
they were so much encouraged by the fact of his having 
found no opportunity of delivering a decisive blow that they 
determined to assume the offensive, and sent instructions to 
Villeroy to menace Marlborough’s position. Villeroy, as 
brave as he was incompetent, executed his orders, and, on 
the 23rd of May, the two armies met at Bamillies, a village 

N n 





546 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

A.D. near the small rivers Geette and Mehaigne. The Trench 
1706— a very slight superiority in numbers; but, as their army 

1 ^°^‘ was composed of the choicest of their troops, they made sure 
of victory. Tor a while the struggle was fierce ; but at last 
they fled in utter confusion, leaving 3000 men dead on the 
field, 100 guns, and most of their baggage, standards, and 
ammunition; and Marlborough showed that he deserved his 
triumph, by setting an example of consideration and kind¬ 
ness towards his prisoners that had not hitherto been usually 
practised. The duke de Vendome, a man given up to in¬ 
dolence and luxury, but gifted with a brilliant genius for 
-war, and capable of the greatest energy when occasion 
required, was sent for from Italy to supersede Yilleroy. 
"During the whole of the year 1707 he avoided coming to 
any serious engagement; and Marlborough was so em¬ 
barrassed in all his operations by the fears of the Dutch 
ministers that he was prevented from following out bis own 
plans. In the early part of the year he had gone to Saxony 
on a mission to Charles XII. of Sweden, to persuade him 
not to interfere as a mediator between Louis and the allies, 
a line of conduct which the Trench king was eager for him 
to assume. His diplomatic address was as conspicuous, and 
almost as uniformly successful, as his military genius; and 
he entirely gained over both Charles and his minister, count 
Piper; not, indeed, without the employment of large bribes 
to the latter,—a mode of persuasion of which Louis had 
previously made ample use with all the rest of the Swedish 
councillors. 

But, while the cause of the allies was thus prospering in 
the north, they were hastening to ruin in Spain. Peter¬ 
borough had won Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon; but 
Galway’s occupation of Madrid, where he allowed his sol¬ 
diers to commit every kind of excess, had roused the Cata¬ 
lonians to arm in the cause of Philip. The duke of Berwick 
drove him from the capital, and almost destroyed his army 
'at Almanza. Galway was succeeded in his command by 
general Stanhope, who for the next two years avoided any 
considerable disaster, but made no advance towards success. 

But this same year, 1707, was signalized in this island by 
a measure contributing as much to its tranquillity and pros¬ 
perity as any single act ever passed by the parliament, the 
union of England and Scotland. It had been often 
proposed since the two nations had been governed by the 


ANNE. 


547 


LI.] 

same king, and recent events had rendered it more desirable a.d. 
than ever. The disasters of the Darien Company, and the *707- 
inferior footing on which the Scotch commerce stood in re¬ 
spect of the English, had exasperated the whole nation; 
and not only had there been plots formed in Scotland for 
the restoration of the Stuarts, but the Scotch parliament in 
1704 had passed a resolution which they called an act of 
security, providing that, on the death of the queen without 
issue, the estates of the kingdom should elect a sovereign 
■who should not be the same person as the sovereign of 
England, unless in the mean time the independence and dig¬ 
nity of the kingdom on a footing of perfect equality were 
fully secured. The manifest danger of such a proceeding 
influenced the English parliament, which had hitherto been 
the chief hindrance to the measure. Commissioners, as has 
been already mentioned, had been appointed by both par¬ 
liaments to settle the terms of union; and on the 1st of 
May, 1707, the complete incorporation of the two kingdoms 
took effect. It had been vigorously opposed by some elo¬ 
quent and honest patriots in Scotland. It was only carried 
by shameful corruption, and was long unpopular among the 
Scotch; but its political expediency became more manifest 
year by year, as well as the practical benefits, which, though 
of great importance to England also, have, as was inevitable, 
flowed from it in still greater abundance upon the poorer 
and the weaker country. 

The carrying of this great measure neither proved strength 
in, nor gave strength to, the ministry. The queen was be¬ 
coming weary of the yoke of the duchess of Marlborough; 
and Harley, the secretary of state, though he originally 
owed his rise to Marlborough’s favour, now, perceiving 
Anne’s secret inclinations, took every opportunity of inflam¬ 
ing her against the duke, in which he was aided by a relation 
of his own and the duchess’s, a Mrs. Masham, for whom 
the duchess had procured her situation of woman of the bed¬ 
chamber, and who, shortly afterwards, became the principal 
agent in the fall of her patroness. Harley himself was soon 
afterwards removed from his situation, having transacted the 
affairs of his office so carelessly, that one of his clerks, named 
Gregg, had access to all the most secret and important de¬ 
spatches, and, having been bribed by the French agents, 
transmitted copies of them to Paris. Gregg was executed 
for his treason; but Harley, though dismissed, was not at 

n n 2 







548 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. all lowered in the queen’s confidence and regard, and soon 

1708. fo U nd means to renew his practices against the ministry, 
and especially against Godolphin and Marlborough. 

The obstacles interposed by the Dutch in the way of the 
active operations proposed by Marlborough were partly 
caused by an inclination which they showed at this time to 
conclude a separate peace with Louis, who would willingly 
have made considerable sacrifices to detach them from the 
allies. He even intimated a wish for a general peace, in 
which he probably was not sincere; and which the English 
parliament were too much elated by the recent victories to 
be willing to afford him on any conditions short of an entire 
renunciation of the Spanish succession. 

The year 1708 opened with more vigorous efforts on both 
sides. Vendome had entertained hopes of having Antwerp 
betrayed to him; but that design was baffled. He suc¬ 
ceeded, however, in surprising Ghent and Bruges; and en¬ 
couraged by these advantages, prepared to attack Oudenarde, 
a fortress of great strength and importance on the Scheldt. 
Marlborough, who had just been joined by prince Eugene, 
though not by his army, which was still many miles distant, 
determined to fight a battle for the preservation of a town 
so important as a key to both Elanders and Brabant, and, 
by a skilful march, placed his whole army between the 
Erench and their own frontiers. He had about 80,000 men, 
the Erench above 100,000; but their efficiency was greatly 
impaired by the presence of the duke of Burgundy and other 
princes of the blood, who interfered with Vendome’s plans, 
and, at times, even countermanded his orders. On the 11th 
of July the great battle of Oudenarde took place. Vendome 
displayed the highest military qualities; but they were all 
rendered useless by the admirable skill of Marlborousrh’s 
arrangements, and the irresistible valour of his troops. He 
had many royal princes under him, who vied with one an¬ 
other in showing themselves worthy of their birth and of the 
commands which he assigned to them; especially the electoral 
prince of Hanover, afterwards George II. of England, distin¬ 
guished himself by repeated charges at the head of a squadron 
of cavalry; and at last the Erench were driven in utter dis¬ 
order from the field. The number of the slain was very 
great; 8000 were taken prisoners; several thousands more de¬ 
serted ; while the entire loss of the conquerors did not exceed 
1000 killed and 2000 wounded. Marlborough followed up 


ANNE. 


549 


LI.] 

his advantage ; again forced the French lines ; and, at the be- a.d. 
ginning of the next month, laid siege to Lisle, the capital of 1708. 
French Flanders, and one of the most important acquisitions 
of the great Conde. Since that time it had been fortified 
by the utmost skill of Yauban, and was now defended by a 
powerful garrison under marshal Boufflers, one of the most 
deservedly eminent of the French commanders. The duke 
of Berwick had arrived from Spain to take a command in the 
French army in Flanders, and made a fruitless endeavour to 
intercept the vast battering train which was destined for the 
siege ; but Marlborough and Eugene had laid their plans too 
well for him to be able to find any opportunity of attacking 
it with advantage, and hoped to reduce him and Vendome to 
the necessity of fighting a second battle, of the issue of 
which they had little doubt. On the 23rd of August the 
siege was formally commenced; on the 3rd of September 
the batteries opened their fire on the walls from 200 guns 
and mortars. In vain did Vendome endeavour to throw rein¬ 
forcements and supplies into the devoted city; in vain, by 
opening the sluices, and inundating the whole country 
around, did he attempt to cut off the communications of the 
allies. The necessary ammunition was conveyed in low flat 
boats across the waters, and the batteries never ceased their 
fire for a moment, till at last, on the 22nd of October, the 
breaches made were so considerable that the besiegers pre¬ 
pared to storm the walls, and then Boufflers surrendered, 
after a gallant defence, which the allied generals appreciated 
so highly that they allowed him to fix the conditions of the 
surrender of the citv; he retired into the citadel, and six 
weeks more elapsed before that also submitted ; and Boufflers, 
defeated, but not disgraced, marched out with all the honours 
of war to rejoin his comrades. 

Vendome had hoped to counterbalance this blow by the 
surprise of Brussels, but Marlborough and Eugene forced a 
passage across the Scheldt, rendering an attempt on that 
city impracticable, and both armies retired into wdnter- 
quarters. The French were not more fortunate by sea; at 
the beginning of the year they sent out a naval expedition 
with the prince of Wales, now called the Pretender, and a 
considerable body of troops on board, which sailed to the 
north of the island with the intention of landing the prince 
in the Frith of Forth; but the English ministry, by great 
exertions, fitted out a fleet of equal numbers, under sir 

• 






550 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. George Byng, who pursued them, and took one or two of 
1708— ^] ie WO rst sailing vessels without the French admiral ven- 
turing on an engagement to save them. At last they were 
glad to return in safety to Dunkirk, though not till disease 
and the hardships of the expedition during the rough 
weather of the equinox had made such ravages in the troops 
that they were believed to have lost 4000 men. 

In the winter prince George of Denmark died, to the 
great and sincere grief ol* the queen; and the ministerial 
changes which took place afterwards, and partly in conse¬ 
quence of his death, for a while strengthened the duke of 
Marlborough’s party. The duke himself, during the winter, 
had employment in Holland as important as his military 
operations, in repeated consultations with both the Dutch 
and English ministers on the proposals of peace, which 
Louis was now making both to the Dutch and to the em¬ 
peror. The war, which had been fraught with such unusual 
disasters to France, had produced terrible distress among 
the people. The taxes had been raised to the highest pos¬ 
sible point, and yet the revenue fell short, far short of 
the expenses of the kingdom. The minister of finance, 
Chamillart, and his successor, Desmarets, endeavoured to 
supply the deficit by paper money; but that was only ac¬ 
cepted at an enormous discount, and the credit, as well as 
the present resources of the kingdom, seemed in the last 
stage of depression. The evils produced an universal outcry 
for peace, which was even led by the duke of Burgundy, 
the presumptive heir to the throne. Louis could not refuse 
a demand so loud and so general, and, after vain endeavours 
to detach first Holland, and then Savoy from the hostile 
alliance, he announced to Philip that he doubted the possi¬ 
bility of maintaining him on the throne of Spain. Philip 
showed no inclination to relinquish any part of his do¬ 
minions ; nevertheless, Louis made an offer to the emperor 
of Italy and the Netherlands for the archduke, on condition 
of Philip’s being allowed to retain Spain and the Spanish 
settlements in the West Indian islands and America. The 
Netherlands and Italy were already lost; still the proposal 
was as reasonable as could have been expected, and was 
one which the allies might well have accepted, and perhaps 
would have accepted, had they believed Louis sincere in 
making it; but he was doomed to pay the penalty of his 
long career of faithlessness, and his offers were refused. He 



ANNE. 


551 


LII.] 

then offered to surrender the whole of the Spanish succes- a.d. 
sion, reserving only the throne of Naples and the Two HOi). 
Sicilies for Philip. Apparently, the readiness with which 
he made these great concessions increased the distrust 
which the allies entertained of him. It was known that he 
w r as still preparing to increase his army in the Netherlands, 
and Marlborough and Somers decided the English cabinet 
to require the abandonment by Philip of the whole of his 
dominions, the recognition by Louis of queen Anne, the 
expulsion of the Stuarts from Prance, the demolition of 
Dunkirk, the cession of several fortresses on the northern 
frontier of Prance, to serve as a barrier for the Netherlands, 
and the restoration of all the acquisitions made by Prance 
since the peace of Westphalia. 

It may be doubted whether true wisdom would ever dic¬ 
tate the imposition of such rigorous terms on a vanquished 
enemy as those to which Louis had offered to submit; and 
their rejection by the allies cannot be defended even by 
their suspicions of Louis’s sincerity. He should have had 
the opportunity of proving the honesty of his professions; 
as it was, the treatment which they received, and the de¬ 
mands which had been substituted for his offers, enabled 
him to appeal to his people to support him against enemies 
whom no concessions could satisfy. He sent his own plate 
to the mint to be coined into money to pay the troops ; 
many of his courtiers imitated his example ; and he was thus 
enabled to provide marshal Villars, who was sent to the 
Netherlands to take the command, with a fine army of 
90,000 men. 

CHAPTER LII. 

ANNE (CONTINUED). 

Marlborough and Eugene began the next campaign by 
laying siege to Tournay, a city so thoroughly fortified that, 
in the opinion of Villars himself, its reduction would take 
them the whole year; but the city was compelled to sur¬ 
render in three weeks, and the citadel in five weeks more ; 
and, with the view of forcing Villars to an action, the con¬ 
querors proceeded to invest Mons. Villars obtained leave 
from the king to hazard a battle for the preservation of 
Mons, and, on the 11th of September, the two armies met 
on the plains of Malplaquet: they were nearly equal; each 





A.D. 

1709 - 

1710. 


552 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

rather exceeding the number of 90,000 men; the French 
had a slight superiority in cavalry, the English artillery was 
rather the more numerous and the more weighty. No 
better contested or more sanguinary conflict darkens the 
history of modern Europe with its sad tale of carnage. 
Boufflers, though senior to Villars in the service, had has¬ 
tened to the scene of action to place himself under his 
orders, and the skill and courage which he displayed fully- 
equalled the disinterested patriotism which had prompted 
such an abnegation of his dignity. It was but little after 
seven in the morning when the heavy booming of the artil¬ 
lery announced that the fight had begun ; it was late in the 
afternoon when Boufflers (for Villars had been carried se¬ 
verely wounded from the field) ordered a retreat, and with 
dauntless resolution rallied his broken battalions and retired 
towards Valenciennes. During the whole of that terrible 
day the conflict had been protracted with unyielding courage 
by both sides, and sometimes with varying fortune: even 
when the French retreated, and, by so doing, acknowledged 
their defeat, they left on the field of battle a far smaller 
number of killed and wounded than their assailants; and 
Villars had some reason to say of the allies, what Pyrrhus of 
old had said of himself, that such another victory would be 
their ruin. Its chief fruit was the capture of Mons; but 
the rain, which set in unusually early, prevented any further 
operations, and, in fact, Malplaquet was the last important 
action between the French and English during the war. 

In spite, however, of Pillars’ boast, France was still less 
able than the allies to encounter such another battle, and 
again Louis opened negotiations for peace. It was agreed 
that plenipotentiaries from both sides should meet at the 
castle of Gertruydenberg, near Breda, and in the beginning 
of 1710 conferences were opened at that place ; but, if the 
allies entertained doubts of the sincerity of Louis before, 
they had far more reason for them now. At the very time 
that he was professing to treat for the cession of Spain bv 
his grandson, he gave the ducal title of Anjou to the infant 
son of the duke of Burgundy, though it must of necessity 
have been resumed by Philip, if he had abandoned Spain, 
and returned to France; and his plenipotentiaries, the 
marshal d’Uxelles and the abbe de Polignac, not only re¬ 
ceived no instructions from him (one of them never even 
saw him before his departure), but were sent, to use the 


ANNE. 


553 


LII.] 

expression of St. Simon, in masquerade, the marshal being 
forbidden to display his truncheon, and to wear his order, 
or other badges of his rank, while the abbe was compelled 
to give no small scandal to his clerical brethren by dis¬ 
carding his ecclesiastical vestments, and appearing, as long 
as the conferences lasted, dressed in all points as a noble 
and a layman. 

Still the conduct of the allies was again impolitic in 
demanding from Louis terms so hard that, even in the 
extremity of his distress, he appeared to have reason on 
his side when he rejected them. They consented, indeed, 
to leave Philip Naples and the Two Sicilies; but, on the 
other hand, they demanded for the Spanish monarchy the 
restoration of Eousillon, and all the territory which it had 
lost since the peace of the Pyrenees, and finally insisted 
that, if Philip refused to abandon Spain, Louis himself 
should join the allies in compelling him to do so. It was 
not unnatural for Louis to reply that if he must make 
war he would rather fight his enemies than his grandson; 
and, after four months of protracted negotiations, the con¬ 
ferences were broken off, and the war was carried on with 
fresh vigour, though Marlborough and Eugene were unable 
to bring the French generals to action, and were forced to 
content themselves with the capture of Douay, and other 
important towns. 

While Europe in general was fixing its eyes earnestly on 
the castle of Gertruydenberg, England itself was much 
more agitated by the folly of the domestic policy of lord 
Godolphin. A silly clergyman, of the name of Sacheverell, 
on the 5th of November in the preceding year, had preached 
a mischievous and libellous sermon, inculcating the doc¬ 
trines of passive obedience to their fullest extent, attacking 
the revolution and the late king, and, what was worse, 
sneering at the treasurer, under the name of Yolpone, bor¬ 
rowed from Jonson’s celebrated play. Godolphin brought 
the matter before the council, and insisted upon the im¬ 
peachment of the preacher before the house of lords. It 
was to no purpose that lord Somers, who had been equally 
attacked in the sermon, suggested that it was beneath 
notice. The impeachment was resolved on, and West¬ 
minster Hall was fitted up for the occasion. The trial of 
the bishops had hardly produced such excitement among 
the populace, who, for some reason or other, espoused 


A.D. 

1710. 






554 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.b. Sacheverell’ s cause with all their might. He had been 

1 710 . bailed; and, as he came each day to the court to take his 
trial, the mob pressed round his coach, huzzaing him, and 
begging to shake hands with him. The queen attended as 
a spectator, and the mob thronged round her carriage with 
loud exclamations: “ Grod bless your majesty! We hope 
you are for Dr. Sacheverell.” As was to be expected, they 
did not confine their zeal to shouting. Being prompted in 
secret by some of the higher classes, they began to attack 
the meeting-houses. Formidable riots ensued, the guards 
were called out, and several people were killed before order 
' could be restored. There was no need of witnesses against 
the prisoner; for he owned the sermon, and his counsel 
justified the principles asserted in it by precedents drawn 
from the homilies of the Church, and the teaching of many 
divines of former ages, whose names were still held in 
veneration. Sacheverell was convicted; but the feeling on 
his behalf was so strong, that his prosecutors did not venture 
to press for a more severe sentence against him than that he 
should be suspended from preaching for three years. If, 
however, Sacheverell escaped easily, the trial caused the 
downfal of the ministers. The queen had long been w r eary 
of them, and had been greatly pleased by the doctrines of 
passive obedience advanced by the counsel for the prisoner. 
Harley, who had been for some time watching his oppor¬ 
tunity, paraded his support of Sacheverell, and had frequent 
secret communications with the queen. The Tory party 
got up petitions from the chief counties, and from several 
large cities, complaining both of the parliament and of the 
ministers, and in September Anne dissolved the parliament, 
and turned out the ministry. The treasury was put in 
commission, Harley being the chief member of it, and St. 
John became secretary of state. 

In Spain more vigorous efforts were made by the con¬ 
tending parties than had been witnessed for the two previous 
years. Philip, at the head of a numerous army, of which 
the Spanish marquis Villadarias was the real commander, 
entered Catalonia, in the hope of gaining over that pro¬ 
vince from his rival; while Stanhope, with the British 
army, which had never been in better condition, invited 
Charles to place himself at its head, and to march into 
Aragon. The two armies met at Almenara, and Stanhope 
gained a victory which, though decided, was prevented by 


ANNE. 


555 


Lll.] 

the lateness of the day from being very complete. Three a.d, 
weeks afterwards Philip sustained a much more severe 1 710- 
defeat at Saragossa, and Stanhope and Charles marched on 
Madrid, of which they took possession at the end of Sep¬ 
tember; but Philip’s reverses reawakened the enthusiasm 
of the Castilians in his favour; and, as the night is darkest 
and coldest immediately before the dawn, so this, his hour 
of greatest disaster, was the immediate prelude to his final 
triumph. Philip’s distress induced Louis to send Yendome 
to his aid; and the arrival of that great general instantly 
changed the face of affairs. Charles had quitted Madrid 
to rejoin his wife, escorted by 2000 cavalry, who would 
have been of more service with the army. Stanhope was 
likewise forced to evacuate the capital, and was cut off by 
Yendome in the small town of Brihuega, and compelled to 
surrender with his whole force. A few days later the 
German general, Stahremberg, was defeated at Yillaviciosa, 
and in a few weeks the cause of Charles was hopeless. 

The desperate state of his affairs made peace seem more 
attainable ; as it was no longer possible for the allies to 
insist on the same terms when he was only recognized in 
one or two small towns, as they thought they had a right 
to demand when he was master of half the kingdom; and 
the new ministers in England were resolved to make peace. 

There was living in London a French abbe, named Gautier, 
who, in January, 1711, crossed over to Paris, and, calling 
on Torcy, the French secretary, asked him whether he 
wished for peace ; for, if he did, he brought him the means 
of concluding it. “ To ask us if we wish for peace, 5 ’ replied 
Torcy, “ is asking a dying man whether he wishes to be 
well again.” Gautier then explained that he was autho¬ 
rized by St. John to express his desire for the termination 
of the war; and shortly afterwards Prior, who had been 
lord Jersey’s secretary, was sent with a more definite mes¬ 
sage. The success of the negotiations was greatly facilitated 
by the death of the emperor, who died in the spring, and 
by the election of the archduke Charles as his successor; 
since it was evidently more objectionable to unite the 
crowns of Germany and Spain at once, than to run the 
distant risk of a similar union of those of France and Spain. 

At the same time the new ministers in England were 
strengthened by an attempt made by a profligate French¬ 
man, named Guiscard, to assassinate Harley in the queen’s 







A.D. 

1711 — 
1713 . 


556 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

presence ; and they began more openly to attack the policy 
and characters of their predecessors. 

The war was not suspended, though, owing to these 
events, it proceeded very languidly. Yillars fortified lines, 
which reached from Montreuil to the Meuse, and, in boast¬ 
ful despatches to Paris, pronounced them the ne plus ultra 
of the allies; but Marlborough turned them, and took 
up a strong position in the rear, and then, after taking 
Bouchain, led his army into winter-quarters. 

It was his last exploit. Harley and St. John, who had 
lately been raised to the peerage by the titles of Oxford 
and Bolingbroke, had now arranged a congress of pleni¬ 
potentiaries to be sent by the different contending powers 
to Utrecht by New Year’s day, 1712; and, though lord 
Nottingham carried an address to the queen, in the house 
of lords, urging that no peace could be satisfactory which 
left Spain and the Indies under the dominion of a prince 
of the house of Bourbon, it only produced an evasive reply 
from the queen; and, shortly afterwards, the prosecution 
of the war was put out of the question by the dismissal 
of the duke of Marlborough from all his employments. 

The pretext for this shameful ingratitude towards the 
greatest subject that any sovereign had ever had, was 
more shameful than the act itself. A charge of embezzle¬ 
ment of the public money was brought against him ; and 
though he proved that all the sums, the receipt of which 
by him was censured as illegal, were only those which, by 
constant precedent, had been considered the regular and 
lawful perquisites of the commander-in-chief, and though 
he also asserted, what there was every reason to believe, 
that he had expended them wholly in the public service, 
for the procuring intelligence of the enemy’s motions, in 
which no one ever was better served, or more successful, 
a committee of the house of commons reported that he 
corruptly appropriated large sums of the public money, 
and the attorney-general was ordered to institute a suit 
against him for their recovery. As Mr. "Walpole, the 
secretary at war, had owed his position in some degree to 
Marlborough’s recommendation, he was now involved in 
his fall. A charge of corruption, not better founded than 
that on which Marlborough had been condemned, was 
brought against him, he also was pronounced guilty by the 
house of commons, and expelled from parliament. 


ANNE. 


557 


LII.] 

The injustice to individuals was bad enough; but the 
assault which the ministers proceeded to make upon the 
constitution, was far more pernicious in principle. The 
lords were not inclined to imitate the subservience of the 
commons, but, on the contrary, showed a resolution to ad¬ 
here to the Whigs ; and Oxford and Bolingbroke resolved to 
obviate the danger of a majority against them in the upper 
house by a creation of new peers sufficient to turn the scale in 
their favour. Twelve were made and introduced into the house 
on the same day. The lovers of the constitution were silent 
with indignant grief; the wits ridiculed the new nobles, and 

S ashed them if they voted by their foreman; but a fatal pre¬ 
cedent was thus attempted to be established, which, however, 
no succeeding minister has been wicked enough to follow, 

! and but one desperate enough even to contemplate for a 
moment. 

The next object of attack was a treaty which the late 
ministers had made with the Dutch, they guaranteeing the 
Protestant succession in England, and the English securing 
them the possession of certain towns on their frontiers as a 
permanent barrier against Spain and Erance. It was urged 
that it was a disgrace to us to seem to require the guarantee 
of any other nation for the maintenance of our own govern¬ 
ment, and that the barrier promised to the Dutch was inju¬ 
rious to our own interests ; and resolutions were passed con¬ 
demning the treaty, censuring lord Townsend who had 
signed it, and pronouncing a memorial, which the Dutch 
estates presented in support of it, a malicious and libellous 
paper. 

In spite of the negotiations at Utrecht, hostilities were 
still carried on in Elanders, where the duke of Ormond had 
succeeded to Marlborough’s command. Eugene took one or 
two towns, but Villars surprised lord Albemarle (one of the 
most undeserving of the favourites of William III.) at 
Denain, defeated him, and took him prisoner; and this 
advantage, the first which the French had gained for many 
years, enabled the marshal to recover Douay and other for¬ 
tresses which had been taken by the allies. These were the 
last events of the war. In August an armistice was signed, 
and, after a long negotiation, peace was finally concluded in 
April, 1713. 

By the peace of Utrecht Philip was established as king 
of Spain and of the Spanish settlements in America. The 


A.D. 

1712— 

1713 . 




558 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. emperor obtained Milan, Naples, and the Spanish Nether- 
H13— lands. The states of Holland acquired a sufficient barrier. 
England got Newfoundland and other settlements on the 
coast of North America, and Louis acknowledged the queen 
and the principle of the Protestant succession. There were 
also other conditions of minor importance. Scarcely any 
treaty has been more vilified by posterity, and yet there are 
few which are further from affording solid grounds for re¬ 
proach. It did not, indeed, attain all the objects originally 
proposed in the formation of the grand alliance. But the 
election of the archduke to the empire had of itself altered 
the complexion of affairs so greatly, that the literal attain¬ 
ment of those objects had ceased to be desirable. It is true 
that the advantages obtained from Erance hardly corre¬ 
sponded to the grandeur of the triumphs which had been 
gained over her; but the glory of those triumphs and the 
increased power of England from her increased renown re¬ 
mained ; her enemy was in a great degree disarmed by his 
recognition of her government, and it may fairly be argued 
that it is a sounder policy to grant a defeated enemy terms 
in which he may contentedly acquiesce, than to impose upon 
him conditions, submission to which he . ever feels as a 
degradation, and from which he will be always on the watch 
to emancipate himself. If, in this case, as in all practical 
matters, we are to judge of the tree by its fruits, we may 
fairly infer from the long tranquillity which Europe enjoyed 
after the conclusion of this peace, that its provisions, which 
no couutry sought to disturb, were in the main just and 
reasonable, and, as such, beneficial to Europe. 

The last year of this eventful reign was greatly disturbed 
by intrigues and dissensions at home. The Scotch took so 
much umbrage at the extension of some of the English taxes 
to Scotland, that they declared the conditions of the union 
violated; and a formal motion was made in the house of 
lords for its dissolution; while, so bitter had become the 
strife between the two parties which in England were con¬ 
tending for the government, that this most suicidal motion 
was countenanced by lord Somers, whose conduct on this 
occasion was the only blemish in a life of singular virtue, 
wisdom, and usefulness. The ministry was also divided 
against itself. Bolingbroke, a man of far greater talents, 
and of even less principle than Oxford, was eager to sup¬ 
plant him as first minister; he sought to secure the favour of 


ANNE 


559 


LII.] 

the High Church party by a most iniquitous and oppressive a.d. 
bill, called the schism act, intended entirely to crush the HI4. 
Dissenters, and to gain the exclusive favour of the queen by 
promoting the design, which he believed her to cherish, of 
securing the succession to her brother, the prince of Wales, 
instead of to the elector of Hanover. The princess Sophia 
had lately died, and the queen was known to have taken 
personal offence at the desire of the elector to obtain an in¬ 
vitation for his son, who had lately been created duke of 
Cambridge, to reside in England, and at his subsequent 
demand of a writ requiring him to take his seat in parlia¬ 
ment as a British peer. Anne wavered; at one time, on a 
discovery being made that some Irish officers were enlisting 
men for the service of the Pretender, she consented to a 
resolution of the parliament offering a large reward for his 
apprehension, if he should land in her dominions; at other 
times her predominant feeling was evidently a strong pre¬ 
ference for him over his rival, which was taken advantage of 
by Bolingbroke to increase his own favour; and at last he 
so far succeeded, that on July the 27th, 1714, Oxford was de¬ 
prived of his office as lord treasurer. 

Bolingbroke now thought his victory secure, and began to 
make arrangements for the formation of a new ministry; 
but the agitation into which the queen had been thrown 
proved too much for her health, which had long been in a 
very precarious state, and two days afterwards it was known 
that she was dying. The privy council met in great anxiety, 
and the Whig leaders, inspired by the urgent necessity of 
the case, acted with unexpected energy. They proposed a 
resolution that the queen should be at once requested to fill 
up the vacant office of lord treasurer, and that the council 
should recommend to her the duke of Shrewsbury as the 
fittest person for that office. Bolingbroke and his partisans 
were too much taken by surprise to resist the proposition. 

A deputation from the council waited on the queen to 
report to her majesty the resolution to which they had come, 
and she at once delivered the white staff, the badge of the 
coveted office, to the duke of Shrewsbury. An express was 
sent off to Hanover to request the elector’s instant presence 
in England, and on the 1st of August the queen died, in 
the fiftieth year of her age, and the thirteenth of her reign. 

Since the time of the third Edward no reign in English 
history had been distinguished by such a series of military 






560 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. triumphs as that which had now terminated; yet there 

*714. never was a sovereign whose personal character less contri¬ 
buted to the glories of her reign than Anne. The spiteful 
and calumnious assertion of the poet, that 

“ Most women have no characters at all,” 

was more true of the deceased queen than of the generality 
of that sex which is the delight and ornament of every 
home, the best adviser of many, the heightener of man’s 
joys, his relief in perplexity, his comfort in distress. And 
even Anne, though destitute of any thing like activity, reso¬ 
lution, or energy, had some amiable qualities. She was an 
affectionate and faithful wife and mother, a kind friend, and, 
if her affability led her to forget the proper dignity of her 
station, it is at least more pardonable than the arrogant 
disdain of their fellow-creatures which characterized the con¬ 
duct of more than one of her contemporary sovereigns. 

ATor were the triumphs of Anne’s reign confined to the 
sword. It has often been called the Golden Age of English 
Literature; and, though perhaps it may be found not quite 
to deserve so high a panegyric, nor to have produced writers, 
as a body, equal to those of the present century, yet it 
may well be proud of Bolingbroke, perhaps the greatest 
orator of our country, and certainly one of the most power¬ 
ful and eloquent of political writers ; of Addison, whose 
exquisite liveliness of fancy was set off with the purest 
taste, and a correct elegance of language which has never 
been surpassed, and who still more deserves the grateful 
admiration of posterity, because, in a gross and scoffing 
age, his pen was always enlisted in the cause of religion 
and virtue; so that, according to the beautiful panegyric of 
a succeeding moralist, he taught virtue not to be ashamed, 
and even turned many to righteousness ; of Defoe, the 
historian of the Plague and of the Union, and still more uni¬ 
versally known as the author of the tale which has fasci¬ 
nated the childhood of every reader, and which has not lost 
its attraction for those of more mature age, “ Bobinson 
Crusoeof Swift, whose writings, though often defaced by 
shameless scuiyilit\, and still more discreditable grossness, 
yet exhibit a vigour of genius, and a mastery over the lan¬ 
guage, which place him high among our English classics ; 
though, by a singular caprice of fortune, he owes the greater 
part of his celebrity at the present day to his “ Gulliver’s 


GEORGE I. 


561 


LIII.] 


Travels,” which, designed as a political satire for a tempo- a.d. 
rary purpose, has become a favourite book of numbers, who 1714. 
devour it as an amusing tale, in utter disregard or ignorance 
of its original object. In a different line of literature, 
Bentley, now in the prime of life, was raising the character 
of English scholarship by a combination of profound learning 
and unrivalled critical acuteness, which places him at the head 
of all the scholars of modern Europe; and Pope, the most 
harmonious of poets, was beginning to smooth the hitherto 
somewhat rugged cadences of English verse into rhythm as 
well suited to enchant the ear, as the playful fancy which 
breathed throughout it with ever-varying imagery was cal¬ 
culated to delight the sense; and, though not equal to 
Dryden, in either the loftiness of his ideas, or in the exu¬ 
berant richness of his language, was laying the foundation 
of a school which lasted till the end of the century, and 
which still finds numerous admirers, and some not altogether 
unsuccessful disciples. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

GEORGE I. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperor, a.d. 
Charles VI. 

France. 

» Louis XIV. 

Louis XV. . .1715 
Spain. 

Philip V. 


Sweden, a.d. 
Charles XII. 

Ulrica . . .1718 

Russia. 

Peter. 

Catharine I. . 1725 


Prussia, a.d. 
Frederic II. 

Popes. 
Clement XI. 

Innocent XIII. 1721 
Benedict XIII. 1724 


lx spite of all the intrigues which had been set on foot, the 1714— 
new king succeeded to the throne as peaceably as any of its H15. 
previous possessors. He was proclaimed by the style of 
George I. in all the principal cities in England, and was 
promptly acknowledged by Louis XIV. and the other con¬ 
tinental sovereigns. Till he reached England the affairs of 
the kingdom were administered by a council of state; and, 
on his arrival, in the middle of September, he appointed a 
new ministry, taken, as was natural, entirely from the Whig 
party. The duke of Shrewsbury resigned the office of lord 
treasurer, which was put in commission; lord Townsend 
and general Stanhope became the secretaries of state, 






562 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Townsend being considered the prime minister; bis brother- 
U15 in-law, Mr. Walpole, was made paymaster-general; and lord 

' '* Cowper resumed the seals as lord chancellor. 

When the new parliament met in March of the ensuing 
year, the new ministers showed that they were not content 
with the acquisition of power themselves, without attacking, 
not only the wisdom, but also the loyalty of their predeces¬ 
sors ; and prepared to impeach Oxford, Bolingbroke, and 
Ormond of high treason. Such a measure was neither wise 
nor just: it was not wise, since it was a flagrant departure 
from their usual moderation, a virtue which was never more 
necessary than now, when so many were disposed to espouse 
the cause of a pretender to the crown, and since it greatly 
prevented that union of parties which was indispensable to 
secure the tranquillity of the kingdom ; and it was not just, 
since no ingenuity of the lawyers could concoct a charge 
against them which would in the least sustain such a pro¬ 
secution. It would have received its best condemnation in 
its total failure, had it not been for the weakness of Ormond 
and Bolingbroke, who fled from the country, and thus gave 
their enemies a fair pretext for treating them as guilty by 
their own confession, and passing acts of attainder against 
them. Oxford refused to fly, and was committed to the 
Tower. The charges against him were founded on his con¬ 
duct in effecting the peace of Utrecht, which, as was 
observed in defence of him and his colleagues by sir W. 
Wyndham, had been approved of by two successive parlia¬ 
ments ; but so plainly did the ministers themselves see their 
inability to support the charges by evidence, or to show 
that, if ever so fully established, they amounted to treason, 
that they took no steps to bring him to trial till two years 
afterwards, and then took advantage of a dispute between 
the two houses of parliament, as to the order in which the 
counts for high treason and those only charging misde¬ 
meanour should be proceeded with, to drop the prosecution 
altogether, and Oxford was released from confinement. 

In the spring lord Halifax, the first lord of the treasury, 
died, and was succeeded in his office by Mr., afterwards sir 
Robert Walpole, who combined with it that of chancellor of 
the exchequer; and his promotion added no small strength 
to the king’s government, which was beginning to stand in 
need of additional support; for George had not yet been a 
twelvemonth king before he had become very generally un- 


GEORGE I. 


563 


LIII.] 

popular. He was at an age when a man does not easily 
adapt himself to the habits and ideas of a foreign nation, 
he was wholly ignorant of our language, and he was accom¬ 
panied by a swarm of ungracious and covetous favourites, 
and by a pair of mistresses of complete though different 
ugliness, one ridiculed for her unwieldy grossness, the 
other for her hungry-looking emaciation, and both detested 
for their rapacity. He himself w r as, generally speaking, of 
an inoffensive and forgiving disposition, hating no one with 
any great vehemence, except his wife and his son, his enmity 
to whom was presently the cause of his parting with his new 
minister. 

He had great need, at this time, of able advisers. Bo- 
lingbroke, exasperated by the act of attainder which had been 
passed against him, had offered his services to the Pretender, 
had been named his secretary of state, and was now busy in 
preparing to effect an insurrection in his favour. Louis felt 
himself precluded by his recognition of George from openly 
assisting him, though he promised as great supplies of arms 
and money as could be afforded in secret; but the Jacobites 
in England insisted upon the aid of a body of French troops 
as indispensable to the success of an invasion. Whether 
Bolingbroke would have been able to overcome the scruples 
of Louis, and to procure such open aid, is uncertain, for his 
strength, which had long been failing, gave way in the course 
of August, and on the 1st of September, 1715, he died; 
leaving his kingdom to a youthful grandson, with the duke 
of Orleans as regent. 

Before, however, the news of his death could reach Scot¬ 
land, the earl of Mar had raised the standard of the Stuarts 
in the Highlands; and the Pretender, though he had deter¬ 
mined to postpone any such enterprise, on hearing the ex¬ 
tent to which his too faithful follower had committed him¬ 
self, determined on joining him. At the same time that he 
quitted Paris, the duke of Ormond crossed over to the 
Devonshire coast, hoping to find the western counties ready 
to take up arms for his cause. But Ormond’s plans had 
been betrayed, and he found himself, for the sake of his own 
safety, compelled to return to Paris, without effecting a 
landing. In Scotland, however, the Pretender was pro¬ 
claimed by the title of James VIII. in several of the princi¬ 
pal cities. The expectation of his arrival excited great 
enthusiasm for his cause among the Highland chieftains, and 

o o 2 


A.l/. 

1715, 




564 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

ad. in a short time Mar found himself at the head of about 5000 

1715. men; while the duke of Argyle, to whom the government 
had entrusted the chief command, had scarcely a fourth of 
that number around the king’s standard. But Mar, though 
skilful in conciliating and stimulating wavering friends, or in 
any other task requiring temper and address, was wholly 
destitute of military skill. He lingered at Perth till 
November, wasting his strength by dividing his forces for 
different enterprises, most of which failed, instead of con¬ 
centrating the wdiole in one well-directed enterprise. 

Meantime, the English government were not wanting to 
the emergency. They exerted all their energy to supply 
Argyle with reinforcements, and, by a well-judged exhibition 
of rigour, seized and confined several persons of great influ¬ 
ence, whom they had reason to suspect of having been privy 
to, or of favouring the insurrection. They also sent down 
general Carpenter, an officer of high character, to secure the 
northern English counties, began to raise several new regi¬ 
ments, and applied to the Dutch for an aid of 6000 men, 
which that nation was bound by the barrier treaty to furnish 
in the event of such a contingency as had now arisen. 
General Wills, another skilful officer, was sent to Lancashire, 
and he and Carpenter combined their forces in an attack on 
Preston, which brigadier McIntosh, commanding a detach¬ 
ment of Mar’s army, had lately seized, having, after one or 
two failures in other quarters, descended into Lancashire, 
where he was joined by a large body of the Roman Catholic 
gentry, headed by Mr. Eorster and lord Derwentwater. 
Eorster had a commission from the Pretender to act as his 
general in England ; but he proved entirely unfit for such a 
charge, and surrendered at the first appearance of Wills and 
Carpenter in front of the town. The very same day, the 
13th of November, Mar fought the only battle that* took 
place, with Argyle, at Sheriffmuir, near Dumblane. The Jaco¬ 
bite force nearly trebled that of their enemies; but their 
superiority in numbers did not make up for the inferiority of 
their leader’s skill. The fortune of the da}^ was not un¬ 
evenly balanced: Argyle with his cavalry routed Mar’s left 
wing, and drove them from the field; "but when he had 
successfully terminated the struggle in that quarter, he found 
his own left cut to pieces by the Highlanders; and, though 
he rallied his broken forces with great resolution, his loss 
had been so great, and the troops that remained were so ex- 







GEORGE I. 


565 


LIII.] 

hausted, that he was completely at the mercy of Mar, who, 
by a resolute charge, might have annihilated his army. But 
Mar, though not destitute of passive courage, was deficient 
in energy. It was in vain that the Highland chieftains 
prayed to him to issue orders for a final attack. “ Oh, for 
one hour of Dundee!” cried the indignant Gordon, when 
the earl pronounced his decision to retreat; but the order 
was obeyed, and the rebellion was over. He retired from 
the field leaving several colours, and guns, and 200 prisoners, 
in the hands of the Royalists. 

James himself had not vet reached Scotland. He had at 
first delayed his departure from France in compliance with 
the advice of his English partisans; and afterwards, when 
he arrived on the Breton coast, he found it so watched by 
English vessels, that it was impossible for him to sail from 
thence. He rode from St. Malo to Dunkirk, and, not 
having heard of the late battle, embarked on board a small 
sloop, and landed at Peterhead on the 22nd of December. 
It was soon apparent, however, that he had no means of 
acting with effect, nor judgment and energy calculated for 
such an enterprise, even if he had possessed the means. 
After much deliberation, he and his council decided on for¬ 
tifying Perth; but hearing that general Cadogan (one of 
Marlborough’s best officers), whom the government, distrust¬ 
ing Argyle’s skill, or perhaps his fidelity, had sent down as 
his colleague, was advancing to attack it, they decided on 
retreating; and, after a few days more, they gave up all 
hope of resistance ; and with the f ull consent of those who 
remained behind, and who thought that they should more 
easily make terms with the government, when the departure 
of the leaders had proved that all idea of resistance was at 
an end, the prince and Mar embarked for France, where 
they arrived in safety after a short voyage. 

The government at once proceeded to take vengeance on 
those who were in their power. Many, who had been taken 
with arms in their hands, had been shot by sentence of 
courts-martial; but the noblemen were conducted to London 
to be tried by their peers. The earls of Derwentwater, 
Nithisdale, and Carnwath, lord Kenmuir, lord Widdring- 
ton, and lord Nairn, pleaded guilty. Lord Wintown was 
tried and convicted ; but the government was not eager 
for blood : Carnwath, Widdrington, and Nairn were re¬ 
prieved ; Nithisdale and Wintown escaped; and lord 


A.D. 

1715— 

1716. 


566 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Derwentwater and lord Kenmure were the only men of 

1710. executed ; bills of attainder were also passed against 

lord Mar, and others who bad fled, and, within the 
short space of four months, tranquillity was completely 
restored. 

The ministers naturally endeavoured to provide against 
the recurrence of such a danger; but it is a singular proof 
of the bigoted spirit of the age, that Stanhope and AY r al- 
pole, though generally the most moderate, tolerant, and 
humane of men, could find no better expedient than enact¬ 
ing laws of additional severity against the Eoman Catholics, 
providing even for the punishment of such as, being Eoman 
Catholics, should enlist in the king’s service; conduct 
which one would suppose the most ordinary prudence would 
have been desirous to encourage. A far more sagacious 
and efficacious measure was the introduction of a bill to 
extend the duration of parliaments to seven years. It had 
been fixed at three years in king William’s reign ; but the 
present parliament had now sat half its time, and it was 
felt that a dissolution would be unsafe in the present ex¬ 
cited state of the country. The bill was carried by large 
majorities in both houses, and has continued the law of the 
land ever since. A treaty also, which Stanhope negotiated 
with Trance, cut off the Pretender from any future hopes of 
assistance from that country, and drove him to rely on the 
aid of Spain and of Sweden, whose king, Charles XII., had 
taken violent offence at king George, whose objects, as elector 
of Hanover, were at variance with some of Charles’s schemes. 
A plan was actually being formed, according to which 
Charles was to invade Scotland, in order to restore the 
Pretender, and his ambassador, count Gyllenborg, was in 
active communication with the English Jacobites, when full 
information of his proceedings reached the ministers, who 
arrested him, seized all his papers, and published them as 
the best justification of their conduct in thus violating the 
ordinary law of nations; and, as Charles was killed shortly 
afterwards, all danger from that quarter was at an end for 
ever. 

But, while the ministry was thus successful abroad, it 
was divided by private dissension, which at last ended in 
Townsend and Walpole quitting it. The king had con¬ 
ceived a prejudice against Townsend, both from his un- 
courtly manner and from his open assertion of the rights of 






GEORGE I. 


567 


L1II.] 

the prince of Wales to the regency, during the occasional 
absences of the king in Germany, and Stanhope took ad¬ 
vantage of that feeling to engross the chief authority, which, 
however, in many respects, he exerted with great judgment. 
He was not as well acquainted with finance as Walpole, but, 
as an old soldier, he was inclined to vigorous measures, and 
the promptitude with which he sent a fleet into the Medi¬ 
terranean to counteract the designs of cardinal Alberoni, 
the Spanish minister, was very beneficial to the country and 
to Europe. Alberoni had restored the power and wealth of 
Spain in a most surprising manner; and, his ambition in¬ 
creasing with the means of gratifying it, he began to cherish 
plans of humbling the emperor, who had not yet acknow¬ 
ledged Philip as king of Spain, and the pope, whom he 
looked upon as a partisan of the emperor. With these 
views he sent forth an armament, such as had not left a 
Spanish harbour for near a century and a half, into the Me¬ 
diterranean, with orders to attack Sicily. Stanhope, willing 
to avoid war, though resolute not to fail in the duty of 
England towards her allies, went himself to Spain, and re¬ 
vealed to Alberoni the general purport of a treaty just 
signed by England, Erance, the empire, and Holland; but 
Alberoni relied on the irresistible strength of his expedi¬ 
tion, and would not listen to the English minister. The 
Spaniards had taken Palermo, and were making, apparently, 
rapid progress in the reduction of the island of Sicily, when 
sir George Byng, at the head of the English fleet, superior 
in weight of metal, though inferior in number to that of the 
Spaniards, appeared off* Messina : a battle ensued, in which 
the Spanish fleet was almost destroyed ; yet it was not till 
the beginning of the next year, 1718, that any declaration 
of war against Spain was made by England ; and after war 
was declared no action of equal importance took place. 
Alberoni indeed openly espoused the cause of the Pretender, 
and aided an expedition for his restoration, which was dis¬ 
persed by a storm, so that only two vessels, with two or 
three companies of soldiers, ever reached the Scottish coast, 
where they were easily defeated by Carpenter; but at last 
Alberoni was dismissed from his offices, and Philip an¬ 
nounced his accession to the quadruple alliance, as the 
treaty was called, which Stanhope had lately communicated 
to his minister, and peace was restored to Europe. 

In the mean time Stanhope, who had lately been created 


A.D. 

1717— 

1718. 


A.D. 

1718 - 

1720. 


568 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

lord Stanhope, had conducted the government generally 
with great moderation and wisdom. The army was greatly 
reduced; the greater part of those implicated in the late 
rebellion were pardoned, and with a wisdom greatly beyond 
his age, he endeavoured to establish principles of religious 
toleration; he repealed the most severe clauses of Boling- 
broke’s schism act, and would have abrogated the test and 
corporation act if the parliament would have suffered it. 
He even proposed, what was a far more perilous measure in 
the general temper of the kingdom, to relieve the Roman 
Catholics from some of the laws which pressed most heavily 
upon them ; but he was unable to carry all his benevolent 
and wise projects into effect. Still the measures which he 
effected and which he proposed eminently entitle him to the 
praise of being one of the first statesmen in Europe who 
ever practically acknowledged the rights of every sect of 
Christians to equal political rights and privileges. 

It would have been well if all his designs had been con¬ 
ceived with equal wisdom ; but, at the end of 1719, he brought 
forward a bill, called the peerage bill, to limit the power of 
the crown to increase the existing number of the peerage by 
more than six new creations. It is needless to point out 
how destructive such a measure would have proved, not only 
of the legitimate prerogative of the crown, but also of the 
proper dignity and authority of the house of lords. Yet the 
opposition was at first disinclined to resist it, and was only 
roused to such a resolution by the shrewd eloquence of Wal¬ 
pole, who foresaw how unpopular it must be with every class 
below the peerage, which was now to be practically cut oft* 
from the attainment of an honour, which even the humblest 
of the educated classes had hitherto seen, by repeated exam¬ 
ples, to be within the reach of their children. He made a 
splendid speech against the bill in the commons, and it was 
thrown out by a great majority. 

This defeat opened Stanhope’s eyes to the impolicy of 
persevering in the exclusion of so able a man, and he accord¬ 
ingly made overtures for a reconciliation with Walpole and 
Townsend, who rejoined his ministry, though not at first in 
such prominent offices as those which they had previously 
held. Townsend became president of the couucil, and 
Walpole paymaster of the forces. And the time was at 
hand when his financial abilities became more than ever in¬ 
dispensable to the government. Erance had been lately ex- 











GEORGE I. 


569 


LIII.] 

cited almost to madness by the spirit of speculation awakened a.d. 
by the schemes of Law, a Scotchman, who, for a while, had H20. 
had the finances of that country entrusted to his manage¬ 
ment ; and though wide-spread confusion and ruin had been 
the ultimate result of them, the contagion reached across 
the Channel, affecting our more sober countrymen, and the 
consequences were seen in the transaction known ever since 
as the South Sea Bubble. 

Some years before, Harley had incorporated the national 
creditors into a company, to whom he gave the exclusive 
right of trading to what was called the South Sea, that is, to 
the Spanish possessions in America; and in the preceding 
year Sunderland, the first lord of the treasury, and Aislabie, 
the chancellor of the exchequer, at the suggestion of sir 
John Blunt, the chairman of the company, proposed to make 
a new agreement with it, with the object of reducing the 
interest to be paid on the national debt, and of gradually 
getting rid of the debt altogether, by persuading the public 
creditor to exchange his claim on the nation for shares in 
the company. Walpole, who had not yet become reconciled 
to the ministry, pronounced the whole scheme a delusion ; 
but he stood almost alone in his opinion, and the minister’s 
plan was formally sanctioned by parliament. It immediately 
became his object to exaggerate the expected profits to be 
derived by the company, in order to tempt the public to buy 
the shares, and the public were as eager to be imposed upon. 

In a short time the price of a hundred pound share rose to 
a thousand pounds. Even at that price intending purchasers 
could hardly find sellers; and the apparent success of the 
company gave rise to numberless other companies with the 
most ridiculous or impracticable objects. The Exchange was 
crowded with speculators of every age, sex, and profession; 
some eager to buy shares in a company to make salt-water 
fresh ; others desirous to aid in the fixing of quicksilver, 
or the discovery of perpetual motion; one company flou¬ 
rished for some weeks by a proposal to purchase the right of 
shaving those who had fine heads of hair, and establishing a 
monopoly of periwigs; another, equally characteristic, but, 
one would have thought, more unnecessary, was to enrich 
its proprietors by importing a stock of large Spanish jack¬ 
asses. The South Sea Company tried to discredit such for¬ 
midable rivals; but, in so doing, aroused a spirit of suspicion 



570 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.b. which became fatal to themselves. At last it began to be 
1721— seen that no speculation could pay the profits which had 
been expected from the South Sea Company; its stock fell, 
and, in a few weeks, thousands of families were reduced to 
beggary. 

The indignation, and the cry for vengeance on those who 
had thus deluded the people, was universal. Some measure 
to meet the public distress was necessary, and, by universal 
consent, the preparation of it was entrusted to Walpole, 
who became chancellor of the exchequer; while, at the same 
time, a singular accident removed the only minister whose 
rivalry he had any reason to dread. Lord Stanhope himself 
was one of the few men in the kingdom who had kept 
wholly aloof from all transactions with the company ; yet, as 
the chief member of the ministry, he did not altogether 
escape from the attacks levelled at his colleagues, and, on 
one occasion, the duke of Wharton assailed the whole minis¬ 
try with such fury, that Stanhope was provoked to equal 
violence, and his passion brought on a fit of apoplexy of 
which he died the next day, and was succeeded as secretary 
of state by lord Townsend. Walpole was very successful 
in restoring public credit, and in saving the proprietors of 
the South Sea Company from total ruin; but he could not 
control the parliament, or prevent them from proceed¬ 
ing against the directors in a manner which exhibited 
a total disregard of law and even of common justice. A 
committee was appointed to investigate the whole affairs of 
the company, and they reported with truth that a great 
quantity of fictitious stock had been created, that in this 
fraud Aislabie, Sunderland, and Craggs, one of the secreta¬ 
ries of state, and others of the inferior ministers, had been 
large partakers, while the king’s mistresses had received 
large bribes to forward the scheme by their influence. 
Craggs died suddenly of the small-pox, Aisiabie was convicted 
and sent to the Tower, Sunderland was acquitted, but was 
forced to resign the treasury, and he was succeeded in that 
office by Walpole, whose long and useful administration 
dates from this period. Against the directors, as a body, a 
bill of intolerable severity, disabling them from ever sitting 
in parliament, and confiscating all their property, which 
amounted in value to 2,000,000/. of money, was passed almost 
unanimously; one of its advocates admitting that there 



GEORGE I. 


571 


LIII.] 

was no law in existence by which they could be punished, 
but urging that such extraordinary crimes as theirs called 
for extraordinary punishments. 

The distress and discontent caused by these events re¬ 
vived the hopes of the Jacobites, who had also been greatly 
encouraged by the birth of a son to the Pretender, who 
was born at Rome, at Christmas, 1720, and received the 
name of Charles Edward. They now formed the design 
of inducing James to raise a force of 5000 men on the 
Continent, and to invade England, during the expected 
absence of the king on his autumnal visit to Hanover. 
Their plot was betrayed to Walpole, who at once arrested 
lord North, lord Orrery, the duke of Norfolk, bishop Atter- 
bury, and several of the subordinate agents. Of these 
last one, a barrister named Layer, was executed, and others 
were sentenced to imprisonment during the king’s pleasure, 
and to confiscation of their property. The lay noblemen 
were released, for want of any sufficient evidence to justify 
their impeachment; and the same reason ought to have 
obtained the liberation of Atterbury, though he was un¬ 
doubtedly guilty. He was confined in the Tower, and 
treated with great severity, not being allowed even to see 
his daughter, except in the presence of an officer of the 
prison. Every thing that was sent from or to him was 
rigorously examined. Even a pigeon-pie was opened to 
see if it held any thing beyond its legitimate contents. 
“ This being,” as Pope observed, “ the first time that dead 
pigeons had been suspected of carrying intelligence.” At 
last, as it was certain that it would not be possible to 
procure his conviction according to law, the ministers 
brought in a bill of pains and penalties to deprive him of 
his bishopric, and banish him from the country. Such 
measures are always unjustifiable and pernicious. Walpole 
may be partly justified on this occasion by the consideration 
that preceding ministers would in general have been less 
moderate, and would probably have proposed a bill of 
attainder, such as had been passed against sir John Een- 
wick, and which he would have had no difficulty in carrying; 
and partly forgiven, from the pleasing reflection that neither 
he, at any future time, nor any succeeding minister, ever had 
recourse* to a similar proceeding, but that this is the last 
instance in our history of such a violation of the legal and 
constitutional privileges of an Englishman. 


A.D. 

1721 — 
1722. 






572 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

The same day that Atterbury crossed the Channel, as a 
banished man, Bolingbroke returned to England, having 
procured his pardon. Eor some reason, with which we 
are unacquainted, James, on his return from Scotland, in 
L716, had dismissed him from his office of secretary of 
state, and from that time Bolingbroke had broken off all 
connexion with the Jacobite party, and had been continually 
endeavouring to procure leave to return to England. Eor 
some time he met with no success, till he began to bribe 
the duchess of Kendal, the most greedy and the most 
influential of the king’s mistresses. Walpole, however, 
could not be prevailed upon to allow him to receive an 
entire pardon. He did not object to his return, or to the 
restoration of his estates, but steadily refused the repeal 
of that portion of the act of attainder, which deprived him 
of his seat in the house of lords. With this modified pardon 
Bolingbroke was obliged to be satisfied. It passed the 
great seal in May, 1723; and he returned, to spend fruit¬ 
less years in intriguing against the minister, against whom, 
to the end of his life, he entertained more resentment for 
what had been refused than gratitude for what had been 
granted. 

Eresh divisions arose in the cabinet. Craggs had been 
succeeded in his office of secretary of state by lord Carteret, 
a man of extraordinary genius for political affairs, of the 
most universal learning and information, and of incor¬ 
ruptible honesty, who only wanted perseverance and steadi¬ 
ness of resolution to become one of the greatest ministers 
who ever directed the energies, or influenced the destinies 
of this country. Unhappily his love of ease and pleasure 
was fatal to his greatness; and, during the greater part of 
his career, kept him in situations subordinate to those 
occupied by men of far inferior abilities. He was especiallv 
acceptable to the king, as the only one of his cabinet who 
could converse with him in German. George understood 
no English, Walpole no French; and the communication 
between them was kept up in Latin, which the minister 
had forgotten, and with which the king had never had more 
than a very indifferent acquaintance; but Carteret was 
familiar with almost every language in Europe; and this 
accomplishment naturally added greatly to his influence 
with foreign courts, and to his favour with his master. Of 
this favour Walpole became jealous. His great, I had 



GEORGE I. 


573 


Lin.] 


almost said, his only fault as a minister was his desire to 
engross all power to himself, a feeling which subsequently 
led him to quarrel with even his own brother-in-law, lord 
Townsend, and which now determined him to remove 
Carteret from an office which placed him in such daily 
communication with the king. Carteret struggled to retain 
his place, and secured the interest of lady Darlington; but 
Walpole was supported by the weightier favour of the 
duchess of ICendal, and prevailed. Carteret was removed 
to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland; and the duke of New¬ 
castle, too well satisfied with the name of office to be 
solicitous about exercising the power of it, succeeded him as 
secretary of state. 

It was in the autumn of 1724 that lord Carteret arrived 
in Ireland, and found the whole island in a ferment, caused 
by a patent which had lately been granted to a proprietor 
of iron-works, named Wood, to coin copper money for the 
use of that island. The want of a sufficient copper coinage 
had been producing great difficulty ; and Wood’s offer was 
gladly accepted by Walpole. It was clearly calculated to 
be very beneficial to Ireland. The new coinage was unim¬ 
peachable in every point; but the Irish privy council was 
offended at not having been consulted. The grant of the 
patent was unpopular among the common people, chiefly 
because Wood was not an Irishman. The Irish parliament 
passed violent addresses to the king, begging him to cancel 
the patent, on the ground that Wood had not complied 
with the conditions mentioned in it, an assertion entirely 
false. Swift, eager to harass the ministry, and never 
scrupulous about the truth of his assertions, attacked Wood 
and his halfpence in a series of letters, under the assumed 
signature of M. B., a draper of Dublin, and known ever 
since as the Draper’s Letters, in which the most lively wit, 
and consummate artfulness of argument, are mingled with 
the most audacious exaggeration, and the whole is set off 
by the most vigorous English, which attracts readers even 
at the present day, who can hardly avoid forgetting their 
contempt for the man in their admiration of the author. 
Carteret found himself unable to allay the storm. He 
instituted a prosecution against the printer of the letters; 
but the grand jury refused to find a true bill; and at last 
the ministers were forced to cancel the patent, and to make 
Wood a pecuniary compensation. 


A.D. 

1723 —■ 
1724 . 


574 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Troubles at the same time broke out in Scotland, from 
the impatience of taxation so often displayed by the Scots, 
who now broke into violent riots in order to procure the 
removal of an impost of sixpence on each barrel ol beer. 
These riots were so formidable, that in Edinburgh and 
Glasgow they could only be put down by the military; but 
at last, by the prudence of Argyle’s brother, the earl of 
Isla, whom Walpole chiefly trusted in his management of 
Scotch affairs, the discontents were appeased, and the whole 
island was now united in undisturbed harmony and tran¬ 
quillity, which was scarcely disturbed by the impeachment 
of lord Macclesfield, the lord chancellor, for corruption and 
peculation, of which he was unanimously convicted, and for 
which he was sentenced to a fine of 30,0007 

But the country was now threatened with a formidable 
war, which was only averted by the address and prudence 
of Walpole, the main object of whose administration was 
the preservation of peace. The king of Spain had been 
deeply offended by the violation of an agreement, according 
to which Louis XV. was to marry the infanta, Mary Anne, 
who, in consequence, had, at an early age, been sent to 
Paris for her education; but as she was still too young, 
the king was easily persuaded to prefer a bride of riper 
age, and to send the infanta back to Madrid. Philip, in 
his indignation, sought to engage England in an alliance 
against France; but as Walpole refused his proposals, 
Philip reconciled himself to the emperor, and endeavoured 
to form a league against both France and England, to which 
Russia also was inclined to accede. Walpole, however, 
succeeded in forming an alliance with France and Russia, 
which, from having been signed at Hanover, in the autumn 
of 1725, is known by the name of the treaty of Hanover. 
The emperor was forced to own that the project of attack¬ 
ing so powerful a confederacy must be abandoned, and laid 
aside his warlike preparations. In England the treaty was 
vehemently attacked by the opposition, as having been 
concluded chiefly with a view to Hanoverian interests, a 
charge for wdiich there was no foundation in this instance. 
Large majorities in both houses approved of the treaty, and 
the funds, which had fallen greatly, rose to their former 
price as soon as peace was looked upon as secure. 

Philip, however, still breathed only war against England; 
and, though the emperor had begun to negotiate with the 





GEORGE II. 


575 


LIY.] 

parties to the treaty of Hanover, which eventually led to 
his concluding a peace with them, Philip determined on 
making an attempt to recover Gibraltar, and, in February, 
1727, sent an army to lay siege to that fortress. The 
besiegers, however, did no credit to themselves, and no 
damage to the place, and soon retired, after having lost 
half their numbers. The Spanish ambassador at Vienna 
even signed the preliminaries of peace with the English 
ambassador; but Philip refused to ratify them, though he 
made no further attempt to carry on war with activity. 

Yet, in spite of all this success, Walpole’s power was 
in danger of being undermined by the intrigues of Boling- 
broke, who, by his bribes, had gained over the duchess of 
Kendal to persuade the king to dismiss him. But in the 
midst of these intrigues the king went to Hanover, and, 
being suddenly seized with apoplexy, died in his carriage on 
the 10th of June. 

George I. was not a sovereign of eminent talents, and 
he laboured under a great disadvantage when he came, at 
fifty-four years of age, to govern a country to which he 
had hitherto been a complete stranger; but he certainly 
deserves some credit for his discernment in choosing and 
supporting honest and able ministers, and very great praise 
for the humanitv with which the leaders of the rebellion 
of 1715 were in general treated, and which is in a great 
degree to be ascribed to his personal good nature and 
humanity. 


CHAPTER LIV. 

GEORGE II. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Charles VI. 

Charles VII. .1741 
Francis I. . .1745 

France. 

Louis XV. 

Spain. 

Philip V. 

Ferdinand VI. . 1745 


Russia. a.d. 
Catharine I. 

Peter II. . .1727 
Anne .... 1730 
John .... 1740 
Elizabeth . .1741 

Hungary <Sf Bohemia. 
Maria Teresa . 1740 


Prussia, a.d. 
Frederic I. 

Frederic II. . . 1740 

Popes. 
Benedict XIII. 
Clement XII. . 1738 
Benedict XIV. . 1740 
Clement XIII. . 1758 


George II. w r as forty-four years old when he succeeded to 
the throne. In 1705 he had married Caroline ot Anspach, a 


A.D. 

1727. 


1727. 







576 


HISTOHY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. princess of great beauty and talent, by whom be bad two 

1727* sons, Frederic, prince of Wales, now twenty years of age, 
and William, the future duke of Cumberland, who was still 
a child, and also four daughters. 

The news of the late king’s death was conveyed by lord 
Townsend, who was in Germany, in a despatch to Walpole, 
who immediately repaired to Richmond to announce his 
accession to the new sovereign, but was greatly disappointed 
at finding that his own power was on the point of expiring. 
In reply .to his inquiry whom his majesty would appoint to 
draw up the necessary speech to the privy council, the king 
named sir Spencer Compton, the speaker of the house of 
commons, which was, in effect, announcing his intention to 
make him the chief minister; but Compton was so ignorant 
of even the ordinary forms of business, that he had no idea 
how to execute his task, and himself solicited Walpole to 
undertake it for him ; nor did he appear in any respect 
ambitious of so burdensome a charge as the government of 
the state: while the queen, who had learnt from her father- 
in-law to entertain the highest opinion of Walpole’s abilities, 
took the earliest opportunity of pointing out to her husband 
the injury which it must cause to his affairs, to entrust them 
to one who had already made such a striking admission of 
his own incapacity. She added, too, that Walpole had 
expressed his intention of fixing the king’s civil list and her 
own jointure at a much larger sum than Compton would 
venture to propose ; and, in a few days, it became known 
that Walpole was to continue at the head of the treasury, 
while Compton was compensated by a peerage with the title 
of lord Wilmington, and shortly afterwards with the presi¬ 
dency of the council. 

If the king’s first act was not very wise, his next was not 
very honest. His father had made a will, which was believed 
to contain a large legacy for the duchess of Kendal and lady 
Walsingham, who passed for the duchess’s niece, but who 
was generally believed to be her daughter. This will arch¬ 
bishop Wake produced at the first council, and handed to 
the king, who, instead of opening it, walked out of the room 
and burnt it. It was also said that a duplicate of it had 
been deposited with the duke of Brunswick, and that he had 
been bribed to suppress it; and the story respecting its 
contents was supposed to be confirmed by the fact of a 
large sum of mo^y being paid to lord Chesterfield when he 




GEORGE II. 



Ot v 


married lady Walsingham, and threatened to insist upon a 
legal investigation of all the circumstances of the transaction. 
Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George II., at a later period 
attempted to excuse his conduct, on the plea that his 
mother had formerly made a will, bequeathing all her per¬ 
sonal property to him, and that that will had been destroyed 
by George I., who, therefore, had no right to the money 
which he had desired to convey to the duchess: but no such 
story had ever been heard in the lifetime of George I., and, 
even had it been true, it is plain that one fraud could be no 
justification of another. The truth is that, next to a fond¬ 
ness for war and military details, avarice was the ruling 
passion of the new sovereign, and certainly this most 
unkingly of vices never led to a more unkingly action than 
in this instance. 

Walpole was now the more firmly fixed in office by the 
admitted inferiority of those who might have been his 
rivals ; and the government was also greatly strengthened 
by the personal popularity of the king, who, by discarding 
his father’s German favourites and German mistresses, and 
by announcing that he intended to make no distinction 
between parties, had gained very general good will. The 
Trench government, too, was so anxious to cultivate a good 
understanding with him that it compelled the Pretender to 
quit Lorraine, where of late he had been residing, and, after 
a short sojourn at Avignon, to remove beyond the Alps, 
where it was plain that he was far less formidable to 
England; and Walpole was therefore able to direct his 
chief attention to his negotiations with foreign states, with 
whom he was anxious to conclude a durable peace. 

The king of Spain now accepted the preliminaries which his 
representative had signed at Vienna, though a definite conclu¬ 
sion of peace was delayed for some time by his eagerness to 
obtain the restitution of Gibraltar. The English ministers 
had not yet learned to appreciate the importance of that 
invaluable key to the Mediterranean. Lord Stanhope had 
been willing to restore it on receiving some merely nominal 
equivalent. Townsend and Carteret had subsequently 
entertained the same views, and had induced the late king 
to write a letter to Philip, promising to take the first favour¬ 
able opportunity to obtain the consent of parliament to the 
restitution; but, happily, the nation in general did not 
share their opinion on the subject. In 1729 the parliament 

p p 


A.D. 

1727— 

1730. 







578 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. resolved “that they relied upon the king’s preserving his 
17^7— undoubted right to Gibraltar and to Minorca;” and, at last, 
the Spaniards, finding their desires completely unattainable, 
abandoned them, and, in the November of the same year, 
concluded the treaty of Seville with England, Erance, and. 
Holland, by which, among other provisions, the English 
trade with Spanish America was re-established, and compen¬ 
sation was made for previous injuries ; while Philip, giving 
up all idea of recovering Gibraltar, contented himself with 
cutting oft* the communication between that fortress and the 
mainland by constructing the strong lines of St. Roque in 
its rear. 

But, though the king was not ruled, nor the kingdom 
pillaged, as it had been in the late reign, by German 
favourites, German objects still occupied a leading place in the 
royal mind, and Walpole was too solicitous to preserve the 
king’s favour to resist them as became an English minister. 
To gratify his sovereign he persuaded parliament to grant a 
large sum for maintaining several Hessian regiments, and 
concluded a treaty with the duke of Brunswick, securing a 
large annual subsidy to that prince on condition of his fur¬ 
nishing a body of 5000 troops, if he should be required to 
do so; nor could the opposition assemble more than a feeble 
minority to resist these unjustifiable votes ; though, besides 
Shippen and Wyndham, whose influence was diminished by 
their notorious Jacobitism, they numbered among their 
leaders William Pulteney, a man of great wealth and influence, 
and of the most brilliant talents, who had formerly been a 
colleague and most intimate friend of Walpole, but who had 
been gradually estranged from him, and had been deprived 
of his office, though AValpole offered him a peerage, with the 
motive, as Pulteney believed, of removing him from the 
house of commons to a sphere where his rivalry would be 
less conspicuous and less dangerous. Pulteney, indignant at 
the treatment which he had received, allied himself with 
Bolingbroke ; and, though never mingling in his intrigues 
with the enemies of his country, became the most formidable 
opponent of AValpole during the whole period of his adminis¬ 
tration. On more than one occasion Walpole tried to lure 
him back by the prospect of the post of secretary of state; 
but, though such a post would have preserved his support 
for ever, it could not recover it, and Pulteney refused all 
the minister’s offers; yet it deserves to be mentioned, as 
















GEORGE II. 


579 


LI V. ] 

characteristic of the amiable characters of the two men, and 
as evidence of their real respect for each other’s talents, 
that, though a parliamentary opposition had scarcely ever 
been carried on with more vehemence and apparent rancour, 
Pulteney more than once announcing the resolution of his 
party never to desist from their attacks till they had deli¬ 
vered AValpole up to the justice of the country, while Walpole, 
on his part, removed Pulteney from the privy council, and 
even from the commission of the peace, it caused no disrup¬ 
tion nor even diminution of their private friendship. They 
both still commonly sat on the same bench in the house. 
The leader of the opposition still asked favours for his friends 
from the minister, and even at the very moment when the 
division was taking place which consummated Walpole’s fall 
and Pulteney’s triumph, Pulteney complimented AUalpole on 
the weighty eloquence of his last speech, aiid the two rivals, 
while the tellers were counting the votes, amused themselves 
with a bet about a line of Horace ; Walpole lost, and tossed 
the guinea with a smile to Pulteney, w r ho pocketed it with 
the remark that it was the first treasury money which he 
had had in his hands for a long time, and that he would take 
care it should be the last. 

But in spite of this mutual private good will, the opposi¬ 
tion of Pulteney and his party to Walpole’s measures was 
unceasing. They attacked a bill which he brought forward 
to prevent English subjects from lending money to foreign 
powers. They attacked him more vehemently for not having 
taken care that the stipulation for the demolition of Dunkirk, 
lfiade at the peace of Utrecht, should be fully complied with, 
though he proved to the satisfaction of the commons that 
there was no ground for such a complaint. They opposed 
his renewal of the charter to the East India Company, and, 
to embarrass him further, they brought forward a bill to dis¬ 
able all pensioners of the crown from having seats in parlia¬ 
ment ; yet none of their attacks diminished the confidence 
which the king and the nation reposed in him, nor weakened 
the resolution with which he adhered to the system of policy 
which he had marked out. 

In the spring of 1730 the ministry lost some parlia¬ 
mentary power in the house of lords by the retirement of 
lord Townsend. It was publicly attributed to differences 
of opinion between himself and Walpole in foreign politics, 
but was more generally believed to be caused by Walpole’s 

p p 2 


A.D. 

1727— 

1730. 



580 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. unwillingness to allow any of his colleagues power equal to 
173°— his own; while he imputed it to Townsend’s jealousy of 
1733 ‘ himself, saying, that the firm had gone on very well while 
it was Townsend and Walpole, but had been broken up by 
its becoming Walpole and Townsend. This division, how¬ 
ever, might have been of serious consequence, had it not 
been for the magnanimity of Townsend, who, instead of 
going into opposition, retired altogether from public life, 
refusing even to attend a debate lest the feeling that he had 
been ill used might lead him to sanction measures of which 
his judgment disapproved. He was succeeded in his office 
of secretary of state by William Stanhope, lately created 
lord Harrington, who, in negotiating the treaty of Seville, 
had shown very eminent talents for diplomacy, and great 
knowledge of foreign affairs; while Mr. Pelham, the bro¬ 
ther of the duke of Newcastle, and afterwards prime minister, 
became secretary at war. 

Townsend’s retirement, however, caused Walpole him¬ 
self to take a more active part in foreign affairs than he had 
hitherto done; and the first fruits of his management were 
seen in the renewal of the alliance with Austria, which, in 
the opinion of many, had been rendered hopeless by the 
treaty of Seville. An able negotiator, Mr. Robinson, after¬ 
wards lord Grantham, was sent to Vienna, and in the spring 
of 1731 a treaty was signed, by which, in return for Eng¬ 
land’s guarantee of the succession to the emperor’s daughter, 
Maria Teresa, to her father’s hereditary dominions, the 
emperor acceded to arrangements very favourable to the 
general commercial interests of England. Tet so ably wa§ 
the whole negotiation managed, that it was concluded with¬ 
out any interruption to our understanding with Prance, 
though a cordial union with the two nations had long been 
supposed to be impracticable. 

In 1733 Walpole brought forward two measures which 
encountered the fiercest opposition. Sixteen years before, 
he had, with the cordial consent of botn houses, established 
a rule that the surplus taxes should form a sinking fund for 
the reduction of the national debt, and, though Pulteney 
had lately made some violent speeches in disparagement of 
the effects of that measure, which he maintained that Wal¬ 
pole had greatly exaggerated, yet it was admitted that at 
the lowest computation, it had paid off above two millions 
and a half of the debt, and that the sum now annually avail- 






GEORGE II. 


581 


LlW] 

able for that purpose amounted to 1,200,000/. a year. Of 
this sum Walpole now proposed to devote half a million to 
the current expenses of the year, and though Pulteney thun¬ 
dered with unusual vehemence against such a project, and 
though sir John Barnard, a merchant of great weight in the 
city ot London, and in the house, and of the highest reputa¬ 
tion for his knowledge of financial matters, pronounced that 
the author of such an expedient must deserve the curses of 
posterity, it was carried by a large majority. The country 
gentlemen supported it, as the only means of avoiding an 
increased land-tax; the holders of stock supported it, not 
wishing to be repaid at a time when the general prosperity 
of the country had reduced the rate of interest so greatly 
that the bank was lending money at three per cent.; and many 
independent politicians supported it, from an opinion that 
the debt must, in the event of a fresh attempt of the Jaco¬ 
bites, unite the fundholders in defence of the government. 

With his other measure he was less successful. The 
excise duties, first invented in the civil wars, had gradually 
become very productive from the increased consumption of 
excisable articles. Though there were but a few things liable 
to this impost, Walpole now proposed to add wine and 
tobacco to the list, urging, among other reasons, that such a 
step would prevent the enormous frauds which were prac¬ 
tised on the revenue with respect to those luxuries ; and that 
by being coupled with a system of warehousing for re-expor¬ 
tation, it would greatly increase the trade and importance 
of the port of London, while it would afford opportunity 
for a large remission of other taxes. But excise duties had 
always been unpopular. The power given to revenue officers 
to enter the houses of individuals at their own pleasure, and 
to summon offenders before a magistrate, by whom they 
could be convicted and sentenced without the intervention 
of a jury, was always looked upon with alarm ; and Pulteney, 
Wyndham, and Barnard made such dexterous use of the 
popular feeling on the subject, that, though the minister 
still obtained a majority, the minority was swollen to a num¬ 
ber which it had never before approached. The people out 
of doors were also excited to a vigorous resistance. Petitions 
were signed by great numbers of people in most of the chief 
towns. Pamphlets of great ability, and of still greater viru¬ 
lence, lent their aid to inflame the public mind. Biots were 
apprehended. The discontent was believed to have spread 


A.D. 

1733. 



582 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. even to the army; the colonel of one regiment declaring 
1733 that, though he would answer for his men against the Pre- 
tender, he could not undertake for their acting against the 
opposers of the excise; and, at last, AValpole, though still 
preserving his own belief, that, as he asserted some years 
afterwards, the scheme would have tended very much to the 
advantage of the state, yielded to public opinion, and with¬ 
drew the bill; affirming, with as much wisdom as humanity, 
that no tax was worth levying by means of the sword, and 
setting an example to all future ministers of prudent 
deference to the general and fixed feeling of the nation, 
even while believing it, as he did believe it, to have been 
inflamed by artful men, and grounded on unreasonable 
prejudice. 

Yet, while renouncing the measure itself with a good 
grace, he resolved to show his displeasure against those who, 
while professing to support him, or actually holding office, 
had contributed to encourage and to swell the numbers of 
the opposition. Lord Chesterfield had lately returned from 
the Hague, where he had been ambassador, with the reputa¬ 
tion of one of the most skilful diplomatists in Europe, and 
was now lord steward of the household; lord Churton 
and lord Burlington filled inferior posts about the court; 
the duke of Montrose, lord Marchmont, and lord Stair en¬ 
joyed lucrative sinecures. Their offices and emoluments 
were taken away, and Walpole even proceeded to deprive 
the duke of Bolton and lord Cobham of their commissions 
as colonels of regiments. The deprivation of the civil offices 
was unobjectionable, but a different principle has now' for 
many years prevailed with respect to military appointments, 
and it would not now be tolerated for a moment that those 
who never allow their political sentiments to interfere with 
the discharge of their duty, should be in danger of finding 
those sentiments made a plea for depriving them of the right 
to discharge that duty. 

The joy of the people at the abandonment of the excise 
bill effaced from their minds their indignation against the 
minister for having proposed it; and though, as the present 
parliament w-as on the point of expiring, the opposition made 
one more attempt to gain popularity by bringing forward a 
measure for the repeal of the septennial act; it had no effect 
either in or out of the house, and the new election left both 
parties nearly in their former condition. 





GEORGE TI. 


583 


LTV.] 

In the year 1736 Edinbur gh was the scene of a singular 
riot, which lias been raised to historical importance, by 
having afforded a subject for one of the most universally in¬ 
teresting works of that admirable writer, whose genius is 
one of the greatest glories of the present century. 

After the execution of a smuggler of the name of Wilson, 
the populace, who did not look on his offence with any great 
disfavour, and who detested Porteous, the captain of the 
city guard, for his general cruelty, began to pelt the soldiers 
who guarded the scaffold, till Porteous, enraged, ordered his 
men to fire on the crowd, and set the example himself by 
taking a musket from a private, and discharging it with 
deadly aim. For this act he was tried, convicted of murder, 
and condemned to death, but was reprieved by the govern¬ 
ment, who were, not unnaturally, unwilling to punish with 
such severity a deed which was prompted partly by the spi¬ 
rit of self-defence. But his reprieve created a feeling of 
absolute fury in Edinburgh, and on the night preceding the 
day which had been originally fixed for his death, an immense 
mob*attacked the tollbooth or city gaol, forced the doors, and 
hung Porteous to a dyer’s pole, which they erected in the 
usual place of execution. The news of this outrage was 
received by queen Caroline, who, as usual, was discharging 
the duties of regent during the king’s absence in Hanover, 
with the most excessive indignation, which was fully shared 
by her ministers. No promise of reward could procure the 
very slightest information as to its authors, though it was 
pretty clearly ascertained that some of them were of a sta¬ 
tion in life much superior to that to which they seemed to 
belong; but the Scotch members of both houses of parlia¬ 
ment so unanimously withstood the first proposal of the 
English ministers, urged probably by the queen, to deprive 
the city of its charter, to destroy the city gates, and thus to 
mark the city and citizens with perpetual ignominy, that the 
bill brought in for that purpose was at last abandoned, and 
Walpole was content with disabling the provost, who had 
behaved with great weakness and remissness, from holding 
any office in future, and with imposing on the city a fine of 
20*00/. for the benefit of Porteous’s widow. 

Since the last election the opposition had gained great 
strength from the open accession of the prince of Wales to 
their side. Durmgthe late reign the present king had been 
on bad terms with his father; and now his son seemed de- 


A.D.. 

173#;— 
1737- 





A.D. 

1736- 

1737. 


584 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

termined to follow his example. He had never come to 
England till after his grandfather’s death; and, after a time, 
had put himself forward as a patron of literature and ol 
men of ability, in order to mark more strongly the differ¬ 
ence between himself and the king, to whom learning and 
learned men were objects of dislike and contempt. The 
consequence was, that the most accomplished men of the 
day, such as Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Chesterfield, Carteret, 
and others, became the prince’s chosen friends; and to this 
formidable phalanx had lately been added two young mem¬ 
bers of parliament, Mr. Lyttelton and Mr. William Pitt. 
The prince had been, some years before, very anxious to 
marry his cousin, the princess of Prussia, but this match 
was prevented by his father from his hatred to the king of 
Prussia, Erederic William ; nor was it till the year 1736 
that the king would consent to any marriage being arranged 
for him. In that year, however, he negotiated a match for 
him with the princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha, whose beauty, 
accomplishments, and virtues speedily gave her a great and 
durable influence over him, but did not tend to reconcile 
him to his father, against whom, on the contrary, his ani¬ 
mosity was increased by the king’s refusal to allow him an 
income of more than half the amount which he himself had 
received in a similar position. At last the whole kingdom 
was scandalized by an open quarrel between the father and 
son, in which it w T as impossible for either to behave worse 
than they did behave. The prince, in defiance of the re¬ 
monstrances of many of his most sincere friends, permitted 
Pulteney to make a formal motion in the house of commons 
to address the king to settle 100,000/. a year on him. The 
king compelled the ministers to oppose the motion, though 
it would only have given the prince what he himself had 
enjoyed. The prince, the very day that the princess was about 
to be confined, removed her from Hampton Court to St. 
James’s, without sending to either the king or queen any 
announcement of the expected birth of their grandchild. 
The king turned the prince out of St. James’s Palace, and 
compelled the lords of the privy council to convey to him 
a message couched in terms of most unprincely severity to 
announce his pleasure on that subject. Walpole himself 
cannot be altogether acquitted, since it appears that, so far 
from endeavouring to soften the king’s displeasure, he ap¬ 
proved of the language which he held towards the prince; 

















GEORGE II. 


585 


LIT.] 

though it may he urged, in his defence, that the indomitable a.d. 
obstinacy of the king was so well known, that it must be *737. 
very doubtful whether his most earnest remonstrances 
would have had any effect. 

Yet, discreditable as this quarrel was to both the parties 
concerned, shrewd observers have considered that it tended 
in no small degree to the strengthening of the Brunswick 
dynasty, by opening to the discontented the prospect of a 
safer road to power than could have been afforded by the 
restoration of the Stuarts, in becoming adherents of the 
prince, whose succession, since the king’s health was be¬ 
lieved to be failing, seemed a not very distant event. 

Fortune had another blow in store for Walpole, in the 
unexpected death of his steady friend the queen, who had 
long been afflicted with a complaint which, from thinking it of 
trivial importance, she forbore to mention to her physicians, 
but which suddenly assumed a dangerous character, and of 
which she died on the 20th of November, deservedly re¬ 
gretted by her husband and by the whole nation ; and with 
her last breath recommending the king never to forget the 
merits of his minister, and entreating the minister never to 
desert the interests of the king. 

The king, after no long time, consoled himself with a 
new mistress, or rather with bringing over to England one 
with whom he had previously been connected during his 
visits to Hanover, a Madame de Walmoden, whom he created 
countess of Yarmouth. In fact, though the court was more 
dull than in the time of Charles II., it was in no respect 
more moral or more decorous ; and it was not the least of 
the benefits which the country derived from the reign of 
George III., that his example, and that of his queen, restored 
that respect for virtue and purity which for a long time had 
seemed entirely banished. But the queen’s death greatly 
encouraged the opponents of the minister, though in the 
first divisions on which they ventured, he preserved his ac¬ 
customed majorities. Their attacks upon him, however, 
increasing as they did in frequency, began to make some 
impression on the people at large; at last they seized on a 
topic on which it was easy to excite the public mind, always 
too willing to take a high tone with the Bourbon govern¬ 
ments. The commercial treaties between England and 
Spain had not been very accurately drawn, and left more 
than one opening for disputes; while, at the same time, 






A.D. 

1736- 

1739. 


586 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ‘ [CH. 

eacli nation undoubtedly exceeded the rights secured to 
them by those treaties. The English traders sought by 
smuggling to evade the restrictions imposed upon them ; 
the Spanish revenue cruisers often insisted upon exercising 
their right of search in waters to which their power did not 
extend. The opposition made no mention of the British 
smugglers, but occupied parliament with incessant com¬ 
plaints of the injuries inflicted by the Spaniards on out* 
traders; and, at last, produced before the house of commons 
a captain of a small trading vessel, named Jenkins, who 
declared that the Spaniards had boarded his vessel, aud 
finding nothing contraband in it, had torn off one of his 
ears, and bade him take it to his king, and say that if he 
had had him in his power he would have done the same to 
his majesty. At a later period the story was universally 
disbelieved : however, at the moment, as it was plain that 
the man had lost an ear 3 , no one questioned his state¬ 
ment ; and when he added that, w’hen he found himself 
subjected to such cruel treatment, he recommended his soul 
to Grod and his cause to his country, the house became 
violently excited, the country caught the flame, and the cry 
for war with Spain became general. For some time Wal¬ 
pole made a gallant resistance: he attempted to avert war 
by a fresh negotiation with Spain, and, in order to negotiate 
with effect, made ostentatious preparations for war. The 
Spaniards, as little desirous of war as himself, restored many 
of the vessels, and released the British sailors whom they 
had seized, and at last consented to a convention, by the 
terms of which they were to pay a considerable sum of 
money as compensation to the British merchants. But as 
this convention did not expressly abolish the right of search 
claimed by the Spaniards, the clamour of the opposition was 
increased by it rather than diminished, and, unfortunately, 
the preponderance of eloquence in both houses of parliament 
was wholly on their side. Walpole’s jealousy of power had 
driven both Carteret and Chesterfield from office, and there 
were no speakers among the lords comparable to either of 
them. In the same way he had alienated Pulteney in the 
lower house, and, by taking away his commission in the 
army from Pitt, had made him an irreconcilable enemy; 

3 Horace Walpole, however, quotes a speech made in the house of commons, 
in 1761, by a Mr. Harvey, who asserted that Jenkins “ died with his ears on his 
head.” 




GEORGE II. 


587 


LIT.] 

and Pitt’s oratory was soon seen to be a weapon of most a.d. 
formidable power. They all now thundered against the ] 739. 
convention, and in the commons 232 members voted against 
an address to thank his majesty for having concluded it. 

The majority was only twenty-eight, being by far the small¬ 
est that had ever yet been counted in favour of the minister: 
the support of the people was evidently failing him. To 
secure the favour of the king, Walpole consented to the 
payment of a subsidy to the Danes, nominally to oblige 
them to supply us with a body of troops, should we require 
them, but in reality to induce them to waive their claims 
on the lordship of Steinhorst, which George II., as elector 
of Hanover, had lately bought of Holstein, but which the 
king of Denmark claimed as belonging to his dominions. 

This measure, however, only gave the opposition an addi¬ 
tional handle for attacking him, on the ground of English 
interests being sacrificed by it to those of Hanover; while 
Walpole, to his dismay, found that the king also was eager 
for war with Spain. In a fatal moment for his own reputation 
he yielded, and on the 19th of October war was declared. 

The universal joy which was diffused amongst the people 
by the declaration did not alter his opinion as to the injury 
which must ensue to the kingdom. In vain did the church 
bells ring, the bonfires blaze, the stocks rise, and even the 
prince of Wales stop at a tavern door and drink success to 
the war while the heralds were proclaiming hostilities; 
Walpole, while the peals were sounding in his ears, vented 
his discontent in a prophetic pun: “ They are ringing their 
bells now, they will be wringing their hands soonappa¬ 
rently without reflecting how deeply to blame he himself was 
in indulging them in a wish which he knew to be so pernicious. 

If it should be said that his conduct was but a repetition 
of that deference to public opinion which we lately praised 
when speaking of his behaviour on the excise bill, it may 
easily be replied that the subjects of debate were so differ¬ 
ent, that no argument drawn from the one can be applied to 
the other. The abandonment of a proposed tax, however 
admirable that tax may have been, could not involve any 
wide-spread mischief. The money wanted could easily be 
supplied, in fact was supplied from some other source; nor 
is there any matter on which the wish of the people has a 
greater right to be consulted than on a question to what taxes 
they prefer to submit, from what they think it most desirable 



A.D. 

1739- 
1740. 


588 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH- 

to be relieved. But the miseries of war are not only wide¬ 
spread, but universal; there is no remedy for them ; and the 
question of peace and war has been, by the principles of our 
constitution, removed from the decision of the people or of 
the parliament, the authority to declare war being vested 
solely in the king, to be exercised on the responsibility of 
his ministers, expressly because such a question, involving 
the happiness and misery of at least two nations, is of too 
momentous and solemn a nature to deserve to be entrusted 
to the clamour or caprice of the multitude, more easily led 
to listen to unfounded complaints of imaginary injuries, or 
to equally vain suggestions of their own rights and of their 
own power, than to weigh either in the scales of prudent 
and dispassionate reason. 

Yet Walpole’s surrender of his conscience by thus going 
to war did not relieve him from his difficulties; while, on 
the other hand, his difficulties did not diminish his resolu¬ 
tion. The duke of Argyle was commonly said to have 
sagacity sufficient always to foresee the fall of a party in 
time to forsake it; and he had lately begun to proclaim the 
difference between his opinions and those of the minister. 
His abilities, his vast possessions, and the ideas of clanship 
prevailing in the Highlands, combined to render him the 
most powerful noble in the kingdom ; but Walpole at once 
dismissed him from all his employments, and ranged him too 
on the side of his adversaries. The duke of Newcastle also, 
though careful to give Walpole no pretext for depriving 
him of his place, began to resist many of Walpole’s pro¬ 
posals, and to show a seeming spirit of independence, by 
which Walpole was not taken in, though he could not avoid 
feeling that such conduct in such a man was an unmistak¬ 
able sign of the decay of his own power. He himself was 
as fond of office as the duke, and began to try the most 
singular expedients to preserve it. At one time he medi¬ 
tated prevailing on the king to consent to a measure to 
separate Hanover from England at the next vacancy of the 
throne; a proceeding which would at once have restored his 
own popularity. At another time he sought, by sending 
civil messages to the Pretender, to secure the support of the 
Jacobites; while at the same time he endeavoured to found 
a better claim to the good will and esteem of his countrymen 
on the successful prosecution of the war. 

The most vulnerable parts of the Spanish power were her 




LTV.] 


GEORGE II. 


589 


American possessions; so be sent out two strong squadrons 
against them, one commanded by commodore Anson, a 
thorough seaman, of invincible courage, fertile in resources, 
and, above all men of his time, skilful in inspiring confidence 
into, and in gaining the affection of, bis crew; the other 
under admiral Vernon, an officer of no great skill in bis 
profession, but so brave that be could have afforded to be 
less boastful and arrogant. Anson met with great difficul¬ 
ties and disasters, but his energy overcame them all. He 
lost the greater part of bis squadron in storms, the greater 
part of his crew by wreck and disease; yet he landed in 
Peru, destroyed the city of Paita, took the great Manilla 
galleon, and by his capture obtained an enormous amount of 
prize-money for himself and the survivors; and, after an 
absence of nearly four years, arrived at Spitbead, having 
greatly extended the naval reputation of England in every 
quarter of the globe. 

Vernon had not the same difficulties to encounter, but 
did not meet with the same success. He took Porto Bello, 
the governor of which made scarcely any resistance; but 
when, after having received enormous reinforcements, he 
made an attempt on Cartbagena, it failed, and he was fain 
to lay the blame on the slackness of the soldiers engaged in 
the expedition, and on their unwillingness to co-operate 
with the sailors. Still, though England gained but little 
by his expedition, the injury which he inflicted on the 
Spaniards was very considerable. He himself boasted that 
he had destroyed all their fortifications in those countries; 
and, though this statement was rather exaggerated, he cer¬ 
tainly contributed to establish the reputation of England 
as the mistress of the seas, and he was received at home on 
his return with an enthusiasm equal to that which had been 
excited by the hard-won and unvaried triumphs of Marl¬ 
borough. Medals were struck in his honour, with an in¬ 
scription terming him the avenger of his country; his birth¬ 
day was celebrated with feasts and bonfires; and his portrait 
became a favourite sign for public-houses, some of which 
preserve it to this day. 

Yet his success, exaggerated as was the opinion of it, 
brought no advantage to the minister. It even furnished 
the opposition with fresh topics for attacking him, as they 
contrasted his exploits with the inactivity displayed by 
admiral Hosier, when in command of a much larger fleet in 


A.D. 
1740 — 
1741. 







590 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. the same seas twenty years before, an inactivity which was 

*741. notoriously forced upon him by his instructions ; and argued 
that as Walpole then was a party to the orders given to 
Hosier, it was probable that the vigour displayed by "V ernon 
proceeded rather from his own spirit than from the newly- 
awakened courage of the minister. At last, in February, 
1741, formal motions were made in both houses of parlia¬ 
ment for an address to his majesty, begging him to remove 
Walpole from his councils for ever, and were supported by 
Carteret in the upper, and Pulteney and Pitt in the lower 
house with great eloquence, and, especially by Pitt, with 
still greater vehemence and passion. Walpole himself was 
not usually an orator of the highest class, but on this occa¬ 
sion he was inspired by his own danger, and made a most 
masterly defence of his policy, pointing out the relief 
from taxation which by his maintenance of peace he had 
been able to afford to all classes, the steady growth of com¬ 
mercial and internal prosperity which had taken place during 
his administration, and exposing the selfishness and incon¬ 
sistency of his adversaries with such effect that the motion 
was rejected by an immense majority of the commons, and 
by a very decisive one in the lords. The Jacobite members 
refrained from voting at all, being unwilling to give their 
support to any minister of king George, but feeling equally 
bound not to press factiously on one who, while carefully 
baffling their schemes, had treated themselves with such 
constant lenity. 

It is greatly to be regretted that* we have but scanty 
records of the eloquence of these days; but the parliament 
viewed with greater jealousy than ever any attempt to 
publish their debates, and in the year 1737 both sides of the 
house of commons agreed unanimously that to give any 
account of them in any kind of newspaper was “ a high 
indignity to, and a notorious breach of the privileges of the 
house;” Pulteney arguing that to do so was to make the 
speakers accountable out of doors for what they said in 
parliament, while Walpole’s main objection appears to have 
been that the reports were unfair, partly from the incom¬ 
petency of the reporters, and partly from their deliberate 
intention to misrepresent the arguments of the side to which 
they were adverse 4 . 

4 There was some foundation for this charge, for even so honest a man as 






GEORGE IE 


591 


LIV.] 

Though still preserving his love of peace, Walpole was 
now forced to preparer for another war. The accession of 
a woman, Maria Teresa, to the hereditary dominions of her 
father, the late emperor Charles VI., seemed to afford to 
Frederic II., the new king of Prussia, (one of the ablest 
and worst men who ever rendered his possession of a throne 
the cause of universal distress to everv country with which 
he came in contact,) an opportunity for extending his 
power; and, on the most frivolous grounds, he invaded her 
territories, and tried to excite other potentates also to aid 
him in dismembering them. The situation of the injured 
queen excited general sympathy in England, which Walpole 
shared so far as to propose to parliament to grant her a 
large subsidy, and to prepare to aid her further with an 
armed force of 12,000 men, in accordance with the late 
treaty of Vienna. He also instructed lord Hyndford, the 
English ambassador at Berlin, to expostulate with Frederic; 
but peaceful arguments proved ineffectual; and George II., 
finding that France was inclined to join with Frederic, 
began to fear for his continental dominions, and stipidated 
with Frederic for the neutrality of Hanover, promising also 
to vote against the raising of the queen to the imperial 
throne at the ensuing election. 

The disgust which this step of the king’s deservedly 
caused in England had no slight effect upon the fortunes 
of his minister, the attacks upon whom daily increased 
both in number and vigour. Caricatures and pamphlets 
were made use of to inflame the people out of doors, one 
of which, combining both species of assault, professed to 
record the “ Life and Death of Piers Gaveston, Prime 
Minister of the unfortunate King Edward II.,” and bore 
on its frontispiece a likeness of Walpole, with a label in¬ 
scribed “ Corruption ” in his hand, an executioner in front 
of him, and an arm holding a sword over his head. He 
himself had been lulled into an undue confidence by the 
late majority in his favour, and was not aware that some 
of his own colleagues, such as lord Wilmington and the 
duke of Newcastle, were secretly caballing against him. 
The Pretender, also, wrote letters to all his adherents in 
the new parliament, which was on the point of assembling, 

Dr. Johnson, who reported debates about this period in Cave’s Magazine, 
acknowledged afterwards that “ he took care that the Whig dogs should not 
have the best of it.” 


A.n. 

1741. 





A.D. 

1741- 

1742. 


592 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

desiring them to use all their efforts to cause his retire¬ 
ment ; and even his warmest partisans perceived that the 
elections had gone so unfavourably for him, that he would 
never be able to reckon on more than a very scanty majority, 
which would soon be surely converted into a minority. 

The new parliament met in December, 1741. It was 
to no purpose that the falling minister conceded many 
points to his adversaries. The attempts to detach the 
prince of Wales from the opposition by an offer to pay his 
debts, and to increase his income, were equally fruitless. 
Already one or two unimportant motions had been carried 
against Walpole, when, on the 21st of January, 1742, 
Pulteney brought forward one for a committee to examine 
into the conduct of the war, necessarily involving serious 
charges against the minister. Walpole again made a 
splendid defence, and was ably seconded by sir William 
Yonge. Both sides made the greatest exertions to bring 
up every possible vote. Many were brought from their 
sick-beds to vote against the minister; nor were his par¬ 
tisans more scrupulous, though they proved less ingenious 
than their adversaries. They also brought a number of 
invalids to the house, and kept them in an adjoining room 
till the division was about to take place; but when the 
decisive moment arrived, they found that the opposition 
had stopped up the key-hole, so that the door could not be 
unlocked in time, and they were left to kick at it with 
unavailing rage till the tellers had reported the numbers 
to the speaker. The majority in his favour was only three; 
and a week afterwards he was in a minority of sixteen on 
a question concerning the Chippenham election. He never 
appeared again in the house of commons. On the 9th of 
February his promotion to the peerage, as earl of Orford, 
was gazetted; and on the 11th he resigned his offices, not 
without an unexpected display of concern on the part of 
the king, who burst into tears when he accepted his re¬ 
signation, and expressed his due sense of his long and great 
services, and his hope of still often receiving his advice in 
moments of difficulty. 

Since the death of lord Burleigh no one had governed 
England for such a length of time as Walpole; nor had 
any administration been equally honourable to the minister, 
and equally beneficial to the people. He had ventured 
upon office at a time of great difficulty, of great commercial 




GEORGE IT. 


593 


LIV.] 

perplexity and distress, aggravated by the circumstance of 
there being a pretender to the crown, supported by a body 
of numerous and able adherents, ever on the watch to take 
advantage of any opening for the advancement of the cause 
which they had at heart, and by the notorious good will of 
some of the most powerful sovereigns on the Continent. 
He re-established public credit, and by remodelling the 
system of taxation, which he based on sounder principles 
than had previously been acknowledged or advanced, he 
gradually raised the country to a pitch of prosperity, which 
enabled it to meet the unprecedented expenses of the wars 
of the latter portion of this reign; and he preserved the 
throne to the reigning family, leaving them far more securely 
seated on it than at his accession to power, while at the 
same time he treated the Jacobite faction with unexampled 
forbearance and humanity. His foreign policy was equally 
wise and successful. In spite of the restlessness of France 
and Prussia, and of the entangled state of the affairs of 
Spain and of the empire, he preserved peace almost without 
interruption for nearly twenty years; and, though he at 
last suffered the united determination of the people and 
of the king to persuade him to embark in war, we must 
recollect that blamable as his conduct in this respect was, 
it was less blamable than that of any other of the parties 
concerned, especially than that of Pulteney and Pitt, who 
not only drove him into that pernicious measure, but who, 
in a great degree, stimulated the people out of doors to 
the vehemence which they displayed in demanding it. 

Nor, though he has often been charged with having ruled 
by means of corruption, did he greatly deserve such an 
imputation. On the contrary, in one of the last debates 
which took place before he quitted office, sir Charles Wager, 
who had for nine years presided at the admiralty, declared 
that in all that time Walpole had never once solicited the 
promotion of any one. He attained power, because the 
unanimous voice of the nation pointed him out as the fittest 
man for it, at a most critical moment; and he retained it, 
because the evident wisdom of his measures conciliated 
general support, even that of the king, who, as we have 
seen, was at first desirous of superseding him. His elo¬ 
quence was not of the highest order, yet it was practical, 
forcible, and successful. On the whole, he certainly de¬ 
serves to be considered one of the best and ablest of the 

q q 


A.D. 

1742. 




HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


594 



A.D. 

1742. 


many good and able ministers, to whom the country owes 
her glory and her happiness. 


CHAPTER LV. 

GEORGE II. (CONTINUED). 

Though mortified by his defeat, Walpole behaved with 
rare patriotism, doing every thing in his power to facilitate 
the new arrangements. Even before his resignation, Pitt 
had begun to intrigue for place, and had attempted to 
come to a secret understanding with him, offering, as it 
was notorious that Pulteney’s party had talked of an im¬ 
peachment, to stand by him and resist any such proceeding, 
if he would use his influence with the king in Pitt’s favour. 
Newcastle, too, was eager to secure the first place in the 
new ministry; but, finding himself unable to succeed in 
that object, consented to convey the message, which the 
king, by Walpole’s advice, sent to Pulteney, offering him 
the chief place, but making it a condition that no attempt 
should be made to prosecute Walpole. Pulteney, however, 
foolishly, and, for a public man, wrongly, had long before 
made a public declaration that he would never take office, 
and he now fancied himself bound to adhere to his ill- 
considered pledge. So the king reverted to his old favourite, 
Compton, now lord Wilmington, who became first lord of 
the treasury; Pulteney accepting a seat in the cabinet without 
office, and, at the end of the session of parliament, the title of 
earl of Bath. Lord Carteret andthe duke of Newcastle were the 
secretaries of state, and lord Hardwicke, one of the greatest 
judges who had ever adorned the bench, and a firm adhe¬ 
rent of Newcastle, continued to hold the great seal as lord 
chancellor. The prince of Wales obtained, as the reward 
of his countenance of Pulteney’s party, the same addition 
to his income which Walpole had offered to secure to him 
the preceding year. 

The first proceedings of the new ministry were directed to 
the prosecution of Walpole. They first proposed an inquiry 
into the whole of his administration, and, when defeated in 
that proposal, carried one for an inquiry into his conduct for 
the last ten years; but the committee which they appointed 
failed to discover any evidence to justify an impeachment, or, 
in fact, any proof whatever of corrupt or unconstitutional 















LV.] GEORGE II. 595 

conduct. The amount of secret service money which had 
been expended was undoubtedly large, but it did not greatly 
exceed that of preceding periods, and the small increase 
which had taken place was easily accounted for bv the 
intricate state of the relations between the different foreign 
powers, in procuring accurate information of which Walpole 
had been very successful, and by the still more pressing 
necessity for watching the intrigues of the Jacobites, whose 
endeavtmrs he was always wisely and hiftnanely anxious to 
prevent rather than to punish. Being completely disap¬ 
pointed, they moved in the house of commons for a bill to 
indemnify all persons who should give information against 
lord Orford; they carried it through the commons, though 
not without difficulty, but it was indignantly rejected in the 
house of lords, chiefly through the efforts of the lord chan¬ 
cellor, who denounced it as an iniquitous bill, calculated to 
make a defence impossible, to deprive innocence of its guard, 
and to let loose oppression and perjury upon the world. 
The inquiry, though conducted by bis most rancorous 
enemies, resulted in proving lord Orford’s complete inno¬ 
cence, and in bringing contempt upon his accusers. He 
had never lost the confidence of the king; he soon regained 
that of the nation, who saw that his successors adopted his 
policy, with no difference except that they carried it out 
with inferior skill and success; and that when divisions 
arose, as they shortly did arise, in the new cabinet, both 
sections of it had recourse to his advice and influence. 

Lord Wilmington was at the head of the treasury, but the 
real chief of the ministry was Carteret; and whatever may 
be thought of the consistency of his measures, they showed 
no want of ability and vigour. The duties of the secretary 
of state were not divided as they are now; but one managed 
what was called the southern, and the other the northern 
department; and Carteret, as the secretary for the northern 
department, had the conduct of the prosecution of the war 
in support of the queen of Hungary. The king, though 
anxious to protect Hanover from injury, was equally desirous 
to distinguish himself as a commander; and, in deference to 
both his wishes, the secretary forgot his old harangues 
against Hanoverian interests, consented to propose to take 
10,000 Hanoverians into British pay, and to unite them, 
the Hessians, and the British troops, who had been already 
sent to Flanders, into one army, under the command of lord 

q q 2 


A.D. 

1742— 

1743 . 






596 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Stair. It was in vain that Pitt in the commons, and Ches- 

G43. terfield in the lords, declaimed against sacrificing England to 
Hanover; the nation at large espoused their doctrines, but 
the parliament gave them but slight support, and in the 
spring of 1743 the king himself crossed the Channel with 
his second son, the duke of Cumberland ; and in June joined 
the army on the Maine, where lord Stair, whose faculties 
and energies had been somewhat impaired by age, was out¬ 
numbered and outgeneralled by the duke de Noailles, who, 
at the head of 70,000 men, was rapidly cutting off his com¬ 
munications, and was beginning to conceive hopes of com¬ 
pelling the whole allied army to surrender. It had some 
time previously been joined by the duke d’Aremberg and 
about 10,000 Austrians, and now amounted to between 40,000 
and 50,000 men. But differences had arisen between 
D’Aremberg and Stair, which required the king’s authority 
and presence to compose. The French army consisted of 
about 70,000 men.- The king determined to retreat, but 
such a movement was full of difficulty and danger: it was 
necessary to pass by the small town of Dettingen, and, in 
order to reach it, to cross a small but rapid river, over which 
there was only one bridge, which Noailles commanded by a 
strong battery. The allies suffered severely in their advance, 
and their destruction seemed inevitable, when JSToailles’s 
nephew, the duke de Grammont, who had been stationed in 
an advantageous position to prevent their passage of the 
river, was carried away by his own impetuosity to cross it 
and attack them, by which movement he placed his troops in 
front of his own batteries, so that they could no longer be of 
service, and transferred all the advantages of the ground to 
the allies; they behaved with admirable steadiness ; the king 
placed himself at their head, cheering on his men, and the 
impetuous charge of the French was speedily repulsed ; they 
were driven back in disorder, and with heavy loss; and thus 
a day which threatened to cause the destruction of the whole 
army ended in their triumph. 

The king had behaved with great intrepidity and coolness, 
as had the duke of Cumberland, who was wounded, and who 
gave a signal proof of his humanity in insisting on the sur¬ 
geon attending one of the French prisoners who was cruelly 
mangled, before he would permit his own injuries to be 
examined. 

The allies, as the enemy was still far superior to them in 















GEORGE II. 


597 


LV.j 

numbers, did not attempt to derive any further advantage 
from their victory, beyond prosecuting their retreat in secu¬ 
rity ; and, as the French also retreated and recrossed the 
Rhine to their own country, no further operations took place, 
and in the autumn the king returned to England. 

He found his ministry divided by fierce dissensions among 
themselves. Lord Wilmington had died during his absence, 
and Pulteney, fearful lest the duke of Newcastle should 
entirely supersede his interest with the king, was persuaded 
by Carteret to overcome his reluctance to accept office, and 
applied for the treasury; but Mr. Pelham, Newcastle’s 
brother, and the paymaster of the forces, had made a similar 
application, in anticipation of Wilmington’s death, and had 
obtained the king’s promise in the event of a vacancy. He 
now received the appointment, and began to study how to 
get rid of Carteret, whom he looked upon, in spite of his late 
success, as a formidable rival in the king’s favour. 

In fact the ministry was unpopular with the country, 
and its unpopularity was chiefly owing to the measures of 
which Carteret was the chief advocate. It was mainly by 
his eloquence that the consent of the commons to employ 
the Hanoverian troops had been gained, and it was against 
him especially that Chesterfield and Pitt declaimed as the 
author of what they called the Hanover measures of the 
cabinet. They even ventured to make a formal motion for 
disbanding the Hanoverian troops, in which Pelham, who 
was always timid, would have acquiesced had it not been for 
the interference of lord Orford, to whose influence with the 
king he probably owed his place, and who now declared that 
their dismissal would be a gratuitous insult to his majesty. 
The motion was defeated; and, as the French ministers, at 
the beginning of the year 1744, contracted a new alliance 
with Spain, and began openly to speak of invading England 
in support of the Pretender, the real danger for a while 
united all hearts in defence of the kingdom, and the opposi¬ 
tion co-operated with the ministry in voting large supplies, 
large levies of troops, and in passing whatever bills appeared 
necessary, such as attainting the sons of the Pretender, in 
case they should attempt to land, and suspending the habeas 
corpus act. 

As vet, in spite of the battle of Hettingen, as the English 
had only appeared in the character of allies of Maria Teresa, 
and the French as allies of Frederic, no declaration of war 


A.D. 

1743 — 

1744 . 



A.D. 

1744 . 


598 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

between the two nations had taken place; but in March, 
1744, war was formally proclaimed both in Paris and Lon¬ 
don, and both parties prepared for a desperate struggle. At 
the very beginning of the year, Charles Edward, the eldest 
son of the Pretender, had quitted Home for the French coast, 
in order to take the command of 15,000 Frencli troops des¬ 
tined to invade England. Marshal Saxe, the most celebrated 
officer in the French service, was appointed his lieutenant. 
And in March a splendid fleet issued from the ports of Brest 
and Bochefort, and sailed up the Channel, and, when the 
admiral believed that they had secured the mastery in the 
British waters, they sent the news to the young prince, who 
was waiting at Dunkirk, and who at once began to embark 
his troops on board transports which had long been prepared 
to receive them ; but the British fleet, under sir John Nor¬ 
ris, which had been lying in the Downs, had now come out 
in sight of the French fleet, which w f as anchored at Dunge- 
ness, but which retired on their approach ; and the next day 
so violent a storm arose, that several of the French vessels, 
and several of the transports, were wrecked, and the damage 
done to the whole fleet w*as so considerable, that the expedi¬ 
tion was postponed to another year. 

Marshal Saxe took the command of the French army in 
Flanders, where he gained several advantages over the allies, 
which might have been counterbalanced by a naval victory 
off Toulon, had not the English commanding officers, Mat¬ 
thews and Lestock, (between whom an ill feeling previously 
existed, from Matthew's having been sent to supersede 
Lestock two years before,) quarrelled so violently, that they 
allowed the enemy to escape, when wholly in their power. 
After a long inquiry into the affair, Lestock was acquitted 
by a court-martial, and Matthews declared incapable of serv¬ 
ing for the future; but the general failure of the campaign 
gave the enemies of Carteret (w'ho by his mother’s death 
had lately become earl Granville) fresh encouragement in 
their endeavours to undermine him. At last, at the end of 
the year, Pelham and Newcastle presented to the king a 
memorial drawn up by the chancellor, who was, at all times, 
their unflinching partisan, enumerating all their objections 
to Granville’s policy, (which had notoriously been guided by 
the king’s wishes,) and, in effect, giving the king the choice 
between him and themselves. Very reluctantly did the king 
yield, but he found himself unable to resist the force thus 



GEORGE II. 


599 


LV.] 

brought to bear upon him. At the end of November Gran¬ 
ville resigned, and Mr. Pelham endeavoured to strengthen 
himself further by new-modelling the administration, and 
forming what, in the language of the day, was called the 
broad-bottom ministry. Lord Harrington succeeded Gran¬ 
ville as secretary of state. The king very unwillingly con¬ 
sented to Chesterfield being lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and 
to his going on an embassy to the Hague before he took 
possession of his government; but he absolutely refused to 
allow any office to be assigned to Pitt, who had given him 
personal offence by his frequent and virulent harangues 
against Hanover. But as Pelham and Newcastle promised 
Pitt never to relax their exertions in his favour, till they had 
removed the king’s displeasure against him, Pitt changed 
his politics and his policy, supporting all the measures of the 
ministry, and speaking in favour of the employment of 
foreign troops in Flanders with full as much vigour as he 
had ever shown in denouncing it. 

Thus strengthened, the ministry concluded a quadruple 
alliance with Holland, Austria, and Saxony, by which they 
agreed to pay large subsidies to all the belligerent powers. 
Nor was their eagerness to fulfil their stipulations abated by 
the utter indifference of their allies to the engagements into 
which they had entered, Austria and Holland not furnishing 
half the number of troops which they were bound to supply ; 
so that when, in April, 1745, the duke of Cumberland arrived 
in Planders to assume the chief command, he had barely 
50,000 men with whom to oppose Saxe at the head of 90,000 
of the choicest troops of the French army. Saxe laid siege 
to Tournay, the allies marched towards him with the reso- 
lution of fighting a battle for the relief of that important 
city, and the French were equally eager for the conflict, 
which the king and the dauphin came from Paris on purpose 
to take a share in. The French occupied a strong position 
behind the village of Fontenoy, their right being protected 
by the Scheldt, and their left by a wood ; but the duke, after 
consulting the Austrian and Dutch generals, marshal Konig- 
segg and the prince de Waldeck, resolved on attacking them. 
Saxe had left 15,000 men to cover the blockade of Tournay, 
but was still superior in numbers to his assailants. At dawn, 
on the 11th of May, the attack began. The duke him¬ 
self led on his men, and the battle was stubbornly contested 
for some time. The Dutch behaved ill, and one of the Bri- 


A.D. 

1745 . 


600 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. tisli divisions under general Ingoldsby behaved worse; but 
the narrowness of the space on which the battle was fought 
neutralized the enemy’s superiority of number, and victory 
began to incline to the side of the allies. The irresistible 
British infantry had pierced the French centre, and defied 
the most gallant efforts of the French cavalry to break their 
serried ranks, or to check their slow but sure advance. At 
last Saxe was preparing to retreat, when, as a last resource, 
the body-guard of Louis, consisting of some thousands of 
the choicest cavalry, and a small battery of artillery, which 
had been stationed in front of the king for the defence of 
his person, was brought up to attack the terrible British 
column. The artillery made a fearful gap in its dense mass, 
through which the cavalry broke with fatal effect, and the 
battle was lost. The duke rallied his men, restored his line, 
and then, after nine hours’ ceaseless fighting, retired in good 
order, with scarcely greater loss than he had inflicted on his 
conquerors, whose abstinence from any attempt to harass 
him in his retreat was a sufficient proof how severely they 
had suffered. 

The consequences, however, of the battle were as great as if 
the victory had been more decisive. Tournay, Ghent, Bruges, 
Oudenarde, Dendermond, and Ostend fell successively into 
the hands of the French, who, as the greater part of the Bri¬ 
tish forces were recalled to make head against the Pretender 
in England, before the end of the year 1746, made themselves 
masters of nearly the whole of the Austrian Netherlands. 

It had a still more important effect on these islands, 
by deciding Charles Edward to renew his attempt to recover 
his father’s kingdom. As far back as the year 1740, the 
adherents of James in Scotland had signed an undertaking 
to rise in arms in his cause whenever a body of foreign 
troops should arrive as auxiliaries to such an enterprise. 
They had ever since considered such an aid as indispensable; 
and had lately, in representations made to the young prince, 
fixed its amount at, at least, 6000 men, with arms for 
10,000 more. Without such a force they considered all 
prospect of success hopeless, and such a force there was now r 
no chance of obtaining, since the king of Prussia, who pro¬ 
fessed to be a Protestant, and who - at all events was not a 
Boman Catholic, had expostulated so strongly with his ally 
the French king on his endeavours to re-establish popery in 
England by supporting the Pretender, that Louis declined 





GEORGE II. 


601 


LV.] 

to furnish any more troops for such an object, and the 
prince had no alternative but either to trust to his own 
resources, or to decide on abandoning the idea altogether. 
He decided on the former course, borrowed money from his 
friends, raised more by pawning his jewels, and wrote to 
Scotland to announce his intention of crossing over imme¬ 
diately. His Scotch friends remonstrated in vain against 
the hopelessness of such an attempt. By the aid of some 
English merchants at Nantes he procured two vessels to 
carry himself and the small store of ammunition and money 
which he had been able to procure; and, though the larger 
of the two was attacked by one British man-of-war and 
forced to put back into port, and though the smaller one, 
the Doutelle, on board of which he himself was, was chased 
by another, and escaped with difficulty among the narrow 
channels which divide the Scottish isles, he landed in safety 
at Moidart, in Inverness-shire, on the 25th of July, accom¬ 
panied by only five or six friends. Many of his most faithful 
adherents came to him at his first summons; and all who 
did so, without exception, implored him to return, since his 
enterprise could end in nothing but ruin to all concerned 
in it. 

The prince’s arguments and entreaties were alike ineffec¬ 
tual to shake their judgment, till a younger brother of 
Macdonald of Kinloch-Moidart, one of the chieftains pre¬ 
sent, seized with a sudden enthusiasm for him whom he had 
been bred up to consider the son of his lawful king, declared 
that if no one else in all the Highlands would join him, he 
at least would die in his cause. Kinloch-Moidart himself 
and Macdonald of Clanronald caught the infection of his 
ardour, and agreed to take up arms. An almost similar 
scene took place a few days afterwards. Cameron of Lochiel 
had the most extensive influence over his brother chieftains 
of any man in the Highlands ; he too came to Moidart, 
and earnestly pressed Charles Edward to return to Erance; 
but, when reasoning and prayer proved unavailing, the prince, 
with an address that never failed him, appealed as a last 
resource to his principles of honour and loyalty, and did not 
appeal in vain. “ I am resolved,” said he, “ to risk every 
thing; I will raise my standard, and Lochiel, in his own 
home, may learn from the newspapers the success of his 
prince.” Conquered, though still unconvinced, Cameron 
vowed to share his fate, and to bring with him every one 


A.D. 

1745 . 


602 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. whom he could govern or influence. Led by his example, 

1745 . chieftain after chieftain declared their adherence to the 
cause; and, when on the 19th of August the Chevalier, to 
give the prince the title by which he has since been com¬ 
monly known, raised his standard in Glenfinnan, he found 
himself at the head of above 1000 men; many but poorly 
and partially armed, but strong in a courage and fidelity that 
has never been surpassed. 

Sir John Cope, the commander-in-chief in Scotland, with¬ 
out delay collected his troops and marched northwards, at 
the head of about 3000 men, in the hope of crushing the 
insurrection in the bud; but when he arrived in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the rebels he found them so strongly posted, on 
a steep mountain called Corry Arrack, that he declined to 
attack them, and proceeded onwards towards Inverness to 
join the clans who preserved their loyalty to the govern¬ 
ment. Greatly encouraged by this timid conduct of his 
adversary, the Chevalier pressed on towards the Lowlands, 
finding his numbers daily reinforced, as the Grants, the 
McPhersons, the Murrays, and other clans joined him on 
his march. His own appearance and conduct contributed 
eminently to his success w r ith a people so little civilized as, 
with the exception of a few of their chieftains, the High¬ 
landers generally were. He was in the flower of youth, 
eminently handsome, and powerful, and of an imposing 
height; as free from all delicacy or effeminacy as the 
hardiest among them; keeping on the open moor, eating 
contentedly of the humblest fare, and listening with appa¬ 
rently ceaseless interest to their national songs, and time- 
honoured traditions. Eagerly pressing onwards to the south, 
he made but a short stay in Perth, crossed the Forth above 
Stirling, and on the 15th of September arrived in sight of 
Edinburgh. 

A regiment of dragoons, commanded by colonel Gardiner, 
an officer of deservedly high reputation, was seized with a 
sudden panic at the sight of their advancing host, and fled 
disgracefully to Dunbar; but, while the city magistrates, 
thus left almost defenceless, were deliberating on the 
course to be pursued, news arrived that Cope had returned 
to Aberdeen, had embarked his men on board some trans¬ 
ports, and was hastening back to their defence. They 
began to negotiate with the Chevalier in hopes to gain 
time; but in the mean while Lochiel surprised one of the 





GEORGE II. 


603 


LV.] 

gates, the rebel army poured into the city, and at midday, 
on the 17th, Charles Edward entered the metropolis of 
Scotland in triumphal procession, while, amid the acclama¬ 
tions of the people, the heralds proclaimed his father king 
by the title of James VIII. 

The castle, however, was still held by general Guest and 
an adequate garrison, who were able greatly to annoy the 
Jacobite forces in possession of the town. The prince gave 
a splendid ball in Holyrood Palace, and the next day quitted 
the fair city in pursuit of his enemies, with whom he longed 
to measure his strength in battle. Cope had landed his 
forces at Dunbar on the 18th, and on the 20th the two 
armies, of nearly equal force, each consisting of from 2000 
to 3000 men, came in sight of one another near the village 
of Preston. No historian can equal the great novelist of 
our language in the description of the battle which ensued, 
if, indeed, that may be called a battle, which only lasted a 
few minutes. A morass separated the two armies; but a 
gentleman in the prince’s service showed his comrades a 
safe path across it, which they passed during the night, 
and at daybreak fell on the surprised Royalists. The 
Jacobites had only one cannon, a rusty, useless piece, 
dragged along with some difficulty by three or four High¬ 
land ponies, not because the commanders trusted much to 
it, or even intended to fire it, but because the Highlanders, 
unused to any fire-arms beyond pistols and fowling-pieces, 
looked with great reverence on an engine which from its 
size they had named the musket’s mother ; but the royalist 
army had a comparatively numerous artillery. The battery, 
however, was stormed by the Camerons and Stuarts before 
a gun was fired. The dragoons, who had fled before, fled 
again. The infantry stood their ground; but, having both 
their flanks uncovered by the misconduct of their com¬ 
rades, they were cut down almost to a man. Above 400 
of the king’s army were killed, and four times that number 
were taken prisoners, while the loss of the conquerors did 
not exceed 100 killed and wounded. Cope did his best to 
rally his troops, but could not recover them from their 
panic. They retreated, almost without a halt, to Cold¬ 
stream, and from thence to Berwick; while Charles Edward 
returned in triumph to Edinburgh, winning the hearts of 
his enemies by his clemency to his prisoners after victory, 


A.D. 

1745 . 


A.D. 

1745 . 


604 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

as entirely as he had gained those of his adherents by his 
intrepidity on the day of battle. 

His success, as was natural, produced him a considerable 
addition to the number of his adherents. By the end of 
October his army mustered nearly 6000 men. Many French 
and Irish officers also joined him; and he likewise received 
a considerable sum of money, and a valuable supply of arms 
and ammunition from France. He now thought himself 
strong enough to descend into England, though his Scotch 
advisers were greatly disinclined to such an expedition, 
and his council began to be divided by dissensions among 
themselves, the Irish officers being jealous of the Scotch, 
the Protestants being suspicious of the Homan Catholics, 
and all grumbling against lord George Murray, who, though 
an able man, was too rough and peremptory in his manners 
to gain the affection of a body of leaders who affected such 
a tone of individual independence as the Scottish chieftains. 
To such a height did these differences arise, that on one 
occasion lord George resigned his command, but was pre¬ 
vailed upon to resume it. 

The advance towards England was skilfully conducted, 
the army being divided into two columns, so that marshal 
Wade, the royalist general in the north of England, was 
at a loss to know at what point the rebels proposed to cross 
the border, and at last awaited them in Northumberland, 
while they, having united their forces, turned off towards 
the western coast, and surprised Carlisle. They marched 
rapidly towards the south, entered Preston, Wigan, and 
Manchester without opposition, but receiving very few 
accessions of force, at last, on the 5th of December, they 
reached Derby, and there they halted, to deliberate on their 
future operations. 

In the meanwhile the government had been active, raising 
troops in every quarter, forming a camp at Finchley for 
the immediate protection of London, sending to Holland to 
claim the aid of the Dutch troops, despatching squadrons 
to cruise off the French and Scotch coasts, so as to prevent 
any supplies or reinforcements from reaching the rebels, 
and endeavouring by every possible expedient to excite the 
feelings of the English against their invaders. They even 
had recourse to handbills, full of strange stories of the 
mischiefs to be apprehended from them. In one town 












GEORGE IT. 


605 


LV.] 

placards urged the butchers to unite agaiust au army com¬ 
posed wholly of Roman Catholics, who ate no meat in 
Lent; in another, mothers were urged to rouse their hus¬ 
bands and sons to take arms against the Highlanders, 
whose favourite meat was the flesh of young children; but 
their arguments had but slight effect. The country generally 
viewed the struggle with singular apathy; so much so, that 
Mr. Fox, who had lately joined the ministry, wrote to one 
of his correspondents that every thing depended on what 
forces arrived first, the Dutch or the Frencli; for that he 
believed the whole kingdom would yield to the first comers 
without a battle. , ' 

But this apathy was far more injurious to the rebels 
than to the government; that had a solid foundation of 
strength, which time would fortify further; their only 
hope lay in exciting the enthusiasm of the nation, to which 
hope delay was fatal. Accordingly, on finding that, though 
they were now within 130 miles of London, no Englishmen 
of rank or influence joined them, and that the common 
people were equally lukewarm, lord George and all the 
prince’s chief councillors gave him their unanimous advice 
to retreat towards Scotland. It was with the greatest 
reluctance that he adopted it. In such an enterprise as 
his it was no doubt the confession of defeat; and yet so 
desperate from the very beginning had that enterprise in 
reality been, that it was his wisest, one may say his only 
course. The guards and several newly-raised regiments 
w*ere between him and London. Marshal Wade was coming 
towards him through Yorkshire. The duke of Cumberland, 
with nearly double his numbers, was in Staffordshire; and 
he was evidently in danger of being surrounded on all sides 
if he remained where he was, while to advance further would 
only increase his difficulties. 

Accordingly, the next day he began his retreat. The 
disappointment of the common soldiers was as great as his 
ow r n, and was occasionally vented in outrages on the inha¬ 
bitants of the districts through which they passed, greatly 
at variance with the good order which they had main¬ 
tained during their advance. As they reached the northern 
counties the badness of the roads greatly hindered their 
progress. Their baggage-waggons broke down, and so 
scanty did their means of transport become, that, as they had 
now some cannon, lord George was forced to engage his men 


A.D. 

1745— 

1740. 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


606 



A..D. 

1745 — 
1746 . 


to carry the cannon-balls in their hands, giving sixpence for 
every ball so conveyed. 

The duke of Cumberland had pursued the rebel army 
vigorously the moment that be heard of its retreat; but 
he never overtook it till he reached Clifton Moor, in West¬ 
moreland, where he tried to check them, but was severely 
repulsed, and made no further attempt to harass them on 
their march. They pushed on rapidly towards the High¬ 
lands, marching from Carlisle to Glasgow, and from Glasgow 
to Stirling, where they were joined by some detachments, 
which had been raised during their absence, and which now 
swelled their numbers to 9000 men. It was as much in 
their favour that the duke of Cumberland was recalled to 
England to defend the south coast, where a French descent 
was apprehended, and that general Hawley, whom he left 
in command, was wholly destitute of military ability. 
Charles Edward laid siege to Stirling Castle, and, as Hawley 
marched to relieve it, drew up his men in the field of 
Bannockburn, in hopes to fight a battle on a spot so full 
of good omen for Scottish warriors; but, when Hawley 
arrived at Falkirk he halted, expecting that the Highlanders 
would disperse at the mere report of his vicinity. As he 
did not advance, the prince and lord George determined 
to attack him, and gave him a defeat, which, though pre¬ 
vented by the darkness from being very decisive, was yet 
so severe, that the English ministers sent the duke of 
Cumberland back in haste to Scotland to retrieve the injury 
which they imagined the king’s interests had suffered. 

In reality, however, the Chevalier was injured more than 
the king. Dissensions arose among his generals, each 
blaming the other for not having pushed their advantages 
further; and the Highlanders, who had obtained a great 
booty, returned home in numbers to secure it. For a 
while the siege of Stirling was persevered in; but, as it 
proceeded slowly, it was determined to abandon it, and to 
retreat to the Inverness Highlands, till the return of spring 
should admit of more active operations. 

The events of the winter, however, augmented the 
difficulties of the rebels. Their supplies, of all kinds, began 
to fail, and the quarrels between their chief officers daily 
increased; while the duke of Cumberland, 011 the other 
hand, received important reinforcements. At the beginning 
of April both armies were again in motion; and the duke 













GEORGE II. 


607 


LV.] 

proceeded northwards from Aberdeen in order to bring the 
war' to a decisive issue without delay. On the 14th of 
April the two armies were so near each other, that there 
was some skirmishing between their outposts ; and, as the 
Chevalier’s troops were little more than half as numerous 
as their enemies, he determined on a night attack, in the 
hope of gaining by a surprise what he had little prospect 
of obtaining by force. Late on the evening of the 15th 
the troops began to march ; but the night was so dark 
that the guides missed their way, and the soldiers were so 
weak for want of food, having only had a single biscuit 
during the whole day, that they could not advance with 
the rapidity that had been calculated on. The day began to 
break, the prospect of surprising the duke’s camp was 
abandoned, and lord George, retracing his steps for a short 
distance, drew up his forces in battle array on Culloden 
Moor. He washed to return further, as there w r as still 
time to take up an almost unassailable position behind the 
river Nairn; but the prince himself, who thought it became 
his royal blood at all times to insist on the adoption of 
the boldest measures, determined to fight w r here he stood. 
Before noon he was attacked by the whole force of the 
duke. His right wing suffered so severely from the enemy’s 
artillery, that lord George Murray charged the opposite 
battalions sword in hand, broke them, and took two guns; 
but the conquering regiments were encountered by a second 
line, which the duke had placed behind the first as a reserve, 
and their steadiness and heavy well-directed fire broke the 
Highlanders in a moment. The Chevalier’s right wing was 
irrecoverably beaten, and the Macdonalds, who composed 
the left wing, refused to advance, alleging that, ever since 
the battle of Bannockburn, they had had the post of honour 
on the right, and that it was an undeserved insult now r to 
place them on the left. Even w r hen Macdonald of Keppoch, 
one of their most honoured chieftains, dashed forw r ards with 
a few r of his nearest kinsmen, and fell mortally wmunded 
as he charged, the clan, with a false and fatal sense of 
honour, refused to move. At last they slowly retired, 
while the duke brought up his whole force to complete his 
easy victory. 

The victory was complete, and decisive of the war. The 
number of killed in the rebel army was great. The pri¬ 
soners were equally numerous, though numbers of the 


A.D. 

1746 . 





608 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



a.d. Highlanders dispensed the moment that the struggle was 
17 - 46 . overj an d sought safety in their native mountains. All 
their cannon and baggage became the prize of the con¬ 
querors, who disgraced their triumph by unexampled cruelty 
towards the vanquished. Numbers of the prisoners were 
butchered in cold blood. Cabins, to which the wounded 
had crawled for shelter, were burnt to the ground with 
their wretched inmates. Some were shot for the pastime 
of the soldiers; some were hung; and those who were 
spared were treated, if possible, with even greater cruelty 
than those who were thus ruthlessly slaughtered. Lord 
George Murray rallied some of the fugitives at Kuthven, 
with the intention of still maintaining the cause of his 
master; but he received a letter from the prince renouncing 
all idea of any further contest. The men thus collected 
separated for ever, and the rebellion was terminated. 

Many of the rebel leaders escaped to the Continent; the 
prince himself encountered a series of adventures, exceeding, 
even those of his great uncle, Charles II., in hardship, 
danger, and romance; sometimes cooking his food with his 
own hands, sometimes not daring to cook any at all, lest 
the smoke should betray the fact of some person lurking 
among the barren rocks and desolate moors which for 
weeks formed his chief hiding-place. Now disguised in 
woman’s clothes, now owing his safety to the fidelity of the 
poorest of the people, sometimes of robbers, sometimes even 
of those whose kinsmen had borne arms against him, but all 
of whom scorned to betray him, though the vast reward of 
30,000/., offered for his apprehension, would have enriched 
them for life; often being saved by the ready wit and 
heroism of that softer sex, to which distress never appeals 
in vain, and one member of which, Flora Macdonald, has 
earned herself a name in history by the important share 
which she bore in his preservation. Nor was he undeserving 
of such faithful service; bearing, as he did, all his hardships 
with a cheerful courage which never failed, and acknow¬ 
ledging his obligations with a sanguine gracefulness which 
for many years kept his name and the affection of his fol¬ 
lowers alive amid the mountains and islands which were so 
long his shelter. At last, in September, five months after 
the fatal day of Culloden, he was taken on board a vessel 
sent by the French government to hover about the Scottish 
coast for that purpose, and a few days afterwards he landed 






GEORGE II. 


G09 


Lvi. ] 

safely in France, and passed the rest of his life on the Con- a.d. 
tinent, constantly forming schemes for the recovery of his H46. 
inheritance, and on one occasion venturing even to visit 
London, in order to judge for himself of the prospects of 
success, but never again becoming formidable or important. 

While he was thus exposed to daily peril, the king’s 
government was occupied in wreaking its vengeance on 
those of his adherents who had fallen into their power, and 
the ministers were too willing to follow the example and to 
yield to the suggestions of the duke of Cumberland, who, 
after earning the name of the “ butcher,” by his atrocities 
in Scotland, had returned to London, and was constantly 
urging them to the utmost severity. No one can blame the 
execution of the leaders, such as lord Lovat, lord Cromarty, 
and lord Balmerino ; they had deliberately chosen to intro¬ 
duce civil war into the island, in order to overturn the 
government, and to re-establish a line of princes whose 
ancestor had forfeited the throne by his own folly and 
tyranny ; and they now only paid the penalty which, from 
*. the beginning, they knew that they were incurring; but 
the common soldiers, who had engaged in the rebellion only 
in obedience to the influence of their superiors, might well 
have been pardoned. Yet numbers of these poor men were 
executed all over the kingdom, and their deaths, with all 
the torturing aggravations prescribed by the law of high 
treason, have left an indelible stigma of cruelty on those 
who sanctioned such indiscriminate punishment. 


CHAPTER LYI. 

GEORGE II. (CONTINUED). 

The king, who did not like the ministry, would willingly 
have got rid of them, but an event, which took place at the 
beginning of the year, showed him his inability to do so. 
Though Pitt forbore any demonstration of hostility to them, 
they were afraid of him while he was out of office; and, 
thinking the rebellion placed the king in some degree in 
their power, they had, in February, unanimously offered him 
the choice of admitting Pitt to office, or of accepting their 
resignations. He gladly chose the latter alternative, and 
entrusted the task of constructing a new ministry to 
Bath and Granville; but they found themselves unable to 

r r 



A.D. 

1746 - 

1751 . 


610 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

form one which should command a majority in either house, 
and, after two days spent in vain attempts, relinquished the 
task; the king w r as forced to take back his old ministers, 
with the addition of Pitt, who was made vice-treasurer of 
Ireland, and shortly afterwards paymaster of the forces; and 
the ministry, for a while greatly strengthened at home by 
the recal of lord Chesterfield from Ireland, which he had 
been governing with consummate ability, to assume the seals 
of secretary of state, in the place of lord Harrington, con¬ 
tinued firm till the death of Mr. Pelham, eight years later. 
He was a pupil of "Walpole’s, and, adhering generally to his 
maxims, cultivated peace with assiduity, and with a success 
which is best testified by the scanty materials which his 
administration affords to the historian. In 1748 Chester¬ 
field, finding himself constantly overborne by the jealousy 
and influence of Newcastle, resigned, and was succeeded by 
lord Sandwich, who, as the British plenipotentiary, imme¬ 
diately on his appointment went to the congress which 
met at Aix-la-Chapelle to arrange the terms of a general 
peace, which was concluded in April, leaving the different - 
nations which were parties to it in nearly the same situation 
as they had been at the commencement of the war, with the 
exception of the additions to the Prussian territories, which 
Prederic had obtained at the expense of Maria Teresa. 

During the tranquillity which followed, the country 
increased steadily in wealth and prosperity. Walpole’s 
policy of encouraging trade by removing or reducing duties 
was adhered to with great success ; our manufactures and 
our commerce grew together ; and, for the first time in the 
history of the world, the government began to encourage 
systematic emigration, for the benefit both of the colonies 
and of the mother country ; the army and the navy were con¬ 
siderably reduced, and, in order to provide for the disbanded 
soldiers and sailors, a sufficient portion of land, in the 
healthy province of Nova Scotia, was offered to all who 
would proceed thither. Above 4000 men accepted the offer, 
and crossing the Atlantic, with their wives and families, 
founded the city of Halifax, aud established at once in full 
vigour a colony which has ever since been one of the most 
thriving dependencies of the crown. 

In 1751 the ministry was further strengthened by the 
death of Prederic, prince of Wales, with whom expired 
every semblance of opposition. His weak and petulant 














GEORGE II. 


611 


LVI.] 

character had caused him to be almost as generally despised 
as his brother was universally hated; and the popular feel¬ 
ing about him, and indeed about his whole family, may be 
understood by a jocose epitaph which was circulated in the 
London coffee-houses, and sung about the streets: 

“ Here lies Fred, 

Who was alive and is dead ; 

Had it been his father, 

I had much rather; 

Had it been his sister, 

No one would have missed her; 

Had it been his brother, 

Still better than the other; 

Had it been the whole generation, 

Still better for the nation, 

But as it’s only Fred, 

Who was alive and is dead, 

There's no more to be said.” 

As his son, prince George, who succeeded to his title of 
prince of Wales, was only twelve years old, it became neces¬ 
sary to provide for the probable event of his accession to 
the throne during his minority. The king, who showed the 
greatest want of feeling for his son’s loss, was anxious that the 
duke of Cumberland, whom he hitherto had always regarded 
with especial favour, should be the regent; but he was so 
unpopular that Pelham would not venture to propose his 
appointment, and, though there was no precedent for any 
woman having had such a charge entrusted to her, the bill 
brought in by the ministry, with the cordial assent of 
every one except the king and the duke, appointed the 
dowager princess of Wales regent during her son’s minority, 
and established a council, at the head of which was to be 
the duke of Cumberland, to assist her with their advice. 

The same year saw also the reformation of the calendar. 
It was notorious that the original calculations, made in the 
time of Julius Csesar, wanted minute exactness; in the lapse 
of years, the error had grown to a variation of eleven days 
between the real and the nominal period of the year; and 
every country in Europe, except England, Russia, and 
Sweden, had adopted the new style, or amended calendar, 
which lord Chesterfield now undertook to establish here. 
He introduced the subject in the house of lords in an elo¬ 
quent and learned speech, moving for leave to bring in a 
bill which should rectify the existing errors, by striking out 
eleven days in the ensuing September, providing against the 

e r 2 


A.D. 

1751 — 

1754 . 






A.D. 

1751 - 

1754. 


612 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

recurrence of sucli an error in future, and making the year 
begin on the 1st of January, instead of, as heretofore, on 
the 25th of March. The bill was passed by both houses ot 
parliament, and received the royal assent; but was long very 
unpopular with the common people, who conceived that their 
lives had been shortened by the abridgment of the existing 
year; and who, at the next election, assailed more than one 
of the members who had supported the innovation with a 
demand that he should restore to them the eleven days of 
which he had assisted to rob them. 

The court was still the scene of occasional intrigue and 
dissension, but the affairs of the kingdom were proceeding 
with prosperous regularity, when, at the beginning of 1754, 
Mr. Pelham died almost suddenly; having deservedly earned 
the character of an honest and prudent minister, and leaving 
the chief position in the ministry as an object of competition 
and intrigue to candidates of very different qualifications. 

The vacant place at the treasury was filled up by the duke 
of Newcastle, who succeeded his brother, resigning the seals 
as secretary of state, and giving to Mr. Legge the office of 
chancellor of the exchequer, which he himself, as a peer, was 
unable to hold. But the post of real importance was the 
secretaryship, which would include the management of the 
house of commons, and would make its occupant the real 
prime minister of the kingdom. 

Ever since he had been forced into office in 1746 Pitt had 
been steadily rising in popularity with the nation, and, as he 
hoped, had made some progress in attaining the favour of 
the king. The first he had earned, nobly earned, by the 
honest disinterestedness with which he had refused the 
enormous perquisites which had previously been considered 
to belong to his office as paymaster; the second he had 
endeavoured to secure less justifiably, by the tacit abandon¬ 
ment of nearly all the views which he had so loudly advo¬ 
cated while in opposition, by assenting to the system of 
subsidies against which he had declaimed, by entering into 
the king’s continental projects, and, in spite of his former 
denunciations ot the Hanover connexion, declaring that that 
kingdom ought to be as dear to Englishmen as Hampshire; 
and he was now openly aspiring to a prominent place in the 
cabinet. 

The secretary at war, Henry Eox, father of the still more 
celebrated Charles James Eox, was also a candidate for the 




GEORGE II. 


613 


LVI.] 

chief place in the ministry. His parliamentary talents were 
of the highest order, though, like his more accomplished son, 
he excelled as a debater rather than as an orator; but, as 
happened also in the succeeding generation, when the mighty 
sons of these mighty fathers renewed the rivalry of their 
parents, his personal character was greatly inferior to Pitt’s. 
He was known to be dissolute and embarrassed, and was 
believed to be corruptible, if not corrupt. But, as a man, 
like his son, he was every thing that was attractive and 
amiable, and, if he had but few political adherents, no one 
had a greater number of personal friends. 

One other statesman must be mentioned; of abilities 
equal, and in many respects superior, to either of these great 
rivals, but inferior in a great degree in moral courage, or, I 
should rather say, in restless energy, to either of them, 
William Murray, the attorney-general; but he, actuated 
partly by a love of quiet, and partly by a just appreciation 
of his own qualities, and bv a correct judgment of the line 
in which he was best calculated to shine, forbore to strive 
for the prizes of statesmanlike eminence, and contented him¬ 
self w r ith aiming at the highest judicial dignities, which no 
one ever attained with more honour, or filled with more 
lasting renown. 

Neither Pitt nor Pox, however, obtained the object of 
their ambition. Pitt was ill at Bath with the gout; nor 
had the king quite overcome his disinclination to being 
brought into personal contact with him. Newcastle did 
offer the post to Pox, with the lead in the house of com¬ 
mons, but as he insisted on retaining in his own hands the 
whole disposal of the secret service money, without inform¬ 
ing Pox of the manner in which he applied it, though a 
great portion of it was at that time devoted to bribing 
members of the house of commons, Fox refused to under¬ 
take the office on those terms, and the secretaryship was 
conferred on sir Thomas Kobinson, a man of no kind of 
ability. Pox, anxious not to lose the place which he had, 
and lured by a seat in the cabinet, agreed to assist the new 
secretary; but Pitt was furious. He pretended, indeed, 
that his indignation arose more from the wav in which Pox 
had been treated than from his own disappointment; but 
he thundered against sir Thomas, and at times even against 
Newcastle himself, till both his victims became almost weary 
of their places, Pox quite weary of defending them, and till 


A.D. 

1754 — 
1755 . 







HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


614 



A.D. 

1755 — 

1756 . 


the nation became thoroughly disgusted with their manifest 
incapacity. 

Yet, though his affairs were in this miserable state, the 
king insisted on his yearly summer visit to Hanover, partly 
for pleasure, and partly with a view to carry out his 
schemes of continental politics under less control than while 
in England, for matters were evidently tending to a war 
with France. In the East the French and English East 
India Companies had been at constant variance, and had 
now for some years been carrying on open hostilities against 
each other ; in the West the frontier between the American 
settlements of the two kingdoms had of late been violently 
disturbed, a body of French troops had been routed by an 
English regiment in Nova Scotia, a town in Virginia had 
been sacked by the French, and an English detachment, 
under major George Washington, had been forced to capi¬ 
tulate; other skirmishes had ensued with alternate success 
and discomfiture, while two English ships had attacked and 
taken two French ships off the coast of Newfoundland. War 
was not yet declared; but it was plain that its declaration could 
not he long delayed, and the king, as usual, began to direct 
his first thoughts to the means of saving Hanover from its 
consequences; negotiating treaties with the different petty 
states of Germany, who were glad enough to hire out their 
troops for English money, and with Russia also, the 
influence of which country it was thought might operate as 
a check upon the ambition of Frederic of Prussia, should he 
be inclined to attack those of his uncle’s dominions which 
lay in such tempting proximity to his own. 

But these subsidiary treaties were always unpopular with 
the nation ; and Legge now positively refused his signature 
to those which the king and Newcastle had just concluded. 
When, at last, Newcastle applied to Pitt, who was known to 
be willing to make terms with him, in his childish manner 
he caressed him, hugged him, w’ept over him, loaded him 
with the most profuse compliments, offered him a seat in 
the cabinet, with a promise of the seals of the secretary of 
state at the first vacancy, if he would only support the 
treaties. Pitt so far compromised his opinions as to offer 
to support the Hessian subsidy as a personal gratification 
to the king, but pronounced against a system of subsidies, 
and broke off the negotiation; insisting that the nation 
could not support a naval and a continental w r ar at the same 








GEORGE II. 


G15 


LVI.] 

time; (it was not long before be proved that it could do 
both, and could carry both to a triumphant conclusion.) 
At the same time he began to pay court to the princess of 
Wales, who was chiefly under the influence of her favourite, 
lord Bute, a man with no qualifications for her favour but 
a showy person and a pompous manner. The late prince of 
Wales, who knew him well, had been used to say that he 
was just fit to be sent ambassador to a court where there 
was nothing to do; but his beauty and stature were suffi¬ 
cient for the princess, who openly inveighed against the 
ministry, and caressed all who were in disgrace with New¬ 
castle. 

Disappointed in his endeavours to gain Pitt, Newcastle 
again had recourse to Fox ; Bobinson retired with a pension, 
and Fox became secretary of state. More than ever exas¬ 
perated, Pitt, the very first day that the parliament met, 
denounced the whole system of the government, the subsi¬ 
dies, the sacrifice of the interests of the kingdom to Hanover, 
and, above all, the coalition between the prime minister and 
the new secretary. He and Legge were dismissed from 
their offices, and for some time the ministry went on with¬ 
out giving any very palpable signs of increasing weakness, 
and even concluded a treaty with Frederic, which greatly 
dispelled the king’s uneasiness about Hanover. 

Meanwhile, though war was not declared, France was 
known to be making great preparations, both by land and 
sea, and a French invasion of England was very generally 
apprehended; while so low had the spirit of the nation 
sunk, that, instead of raising a native army, the parliament 
agreed to resolutions requesting the king to bring over 
some Hanoverian and Hessian regiments to defend the 
country from its expected assailants. 

The real object of the French, however, was not the 
invasion of England, but the recovery of Minorca, which 
had been taken from them by Stanhope in the reign of 
queen Anne. It was defended by a scanty garrison, under 
the command of general Blakeney, a gallant officer, but dis¬ 
abled by age and infirmity ; and a small and ill-appointed 
fleet was sent to its assistance, under admiral Byng. At 
the beginning of April a more powerful fleet, having on 
board an army of 10,000 men, left Toulon to attack that 
important island. The troops landed without resistance, 
and began to attack the principal castle. Byng arrived at 


A.D. 

1755 — 

175 ( 5 . 









616 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. the end of May, and engaged the Trench fleet; but, finding 

1756 . that he had received fully as much damage as he had in¬ 
flicted, and that his ships were in very bad condition, and 
judging also that a victory would not save Minorca, where 
the French army was opposed by not more than a sixth of 
their numbers, he did not attempt to renew the action, but, 
with the full approval of a council of war, retired towards 
Gibraltar, which he thought likely to be another object of 
attack. 

The fall of Minorca excited the whole people to the most 
violent indignation. War had been declared against France 
the moment that the first news arrived of the French 
having landed there; and now every voice clamoured for 
vengeance on those to whose misconduct they imputed the 
loss. Some officers were at once cashiered, preparations 
were made for bringing Byng to trial, and the tone of the 
whole people became so menacing, that Fox determined to 
escape from his share in the attacks which he foresaw im¬ 
pending at the next meeting of parliament, and resigned the 
seals, while almost at the same time Newcastle was deprived 
of the support of the only other person in the commons 
who could cope with Pitt, by the death of the chief justice, 
and the resolution with which Murray, the attornev-general, 
insisted on his right to succeed to the vacant dignity. 
Newcastle was in the greatest perplexity. He tried to con¬ 
ciliate the princess of Wales by giving lord Bute the prin¬ 
cipal post in the household of the young prince, who had 
just attained the age of eighteen, which had been fixed for 
his majority ; he tried to gain Pitt by offering him Fox’s 
office ; Pitt refused to serve under him in any situation; 
he then offered Granville, the president of the council, to 
exchange posts with him, and to relinquish to him the 
supreme management of affairs; to do any thing, in short, 
rather than to abandon office, which he clung to with a 
daily increasing fondness, in spite of the daily increasing 
evidence of his incompetency to fill it. 

At last he resigned; yet, in spite of the constant in¬ 
trigue, corruption of others, and utter subserviency to the 
king’s Hanoverian politics, by which he had so long pre¬ 
served his different places, he is entitled to the praise, in 
that day a rare one, of entire personal disinterestedness. 
Instead of increasing, he had greatly diminished his large 
fortune; and he steadily refused to repair it by a pension, 








GEORGE II, 


617 


LVI.] 

a sinecure, or any other mode, then so commonly adopted by 
retiring ministers. 

Still preferring every alternative to that of putting himself 
wholly in Pitt’s power, the king sent for Fox, and desired 
him to form a ministry, which should comprise Pitt; but 
Pitt, who looked upon Fox as having deserted him in the 
preceding year, refused to act with him ; and at last an 
administration was formed, which was in reality Pitt’s, 
though the duke of Devonshire was at the head of the 
treasury. Pitt became secretary of state, with the lead 
of the house of commons, and his brother-in-law, lord 
Temple, a pompous, heavy man, with no recommendation 
but that of being Mrs. Pitt’s brother, was made first lord of 
the admiralty. 

In December the new ministry met the parliament, and 
the language which they put iuto the king’s speech, and 
their conduct in the debate on the address, was not calcu¬ 
lated to diminish the antipathy which he felt to them. 
11167 - made him announce that he was about to send the 
Hanoverian troops back to their own country. They also 
made him recommend the houses to provide for strengthen¬ 
ing the militia, a force which he was known to regard 
with especial disfavour; and when it was proposed in the 
lords to thank him for having brought the Hanoverians 
over, lord Temple, though ill, came down to the house on 
purpose to oppose the motion, which he did in terms which 
the king could hardly regard as any thing but personally 
offensive. Pitt’s own conduct was not calculated to in¬ 
crease his influence; he was at all times self-confident and 
impracticable, and now he treated all his colleagues with 
intolerable haughtiness. Nevertheless, his vigorous mind 
stamped its impress upon all the measures of the govern¬ 
ment. A large addition to the usual supplies was granted. 
One hundred thousand men were voted for the two services; 
and Pitt, with a magnanimous policy, of which he after¬ 
wards justly boasted, raised some of the new regiments in 
'the Highlands, not fearing to enlist members of the clans 
which had in the last rebellion been foremost in disaffection. 
Pursuing the line of conduct with reference to the king’s 
personal wishes, which he had adopted while paymaster, 
he even prevailed on the commons to grant a small subsidy 
to Hanover; but the royal resentment was too deeply 


A.D. 

1756 — 

1757 . 







HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


618 



a.d. rooted to be so easily appeased, and his majesty was still 
17^7. resolved to get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. 

The chief business, however, which occupied the attention 
of the kingdom during the existence of this ministry was 
the trial of Byng. After a long inquiry the court-martial 
considered that they could not avoid finding that he had 
not done his utmost to relieve Minorca, though they fully 
acquitted him of either cowardice or treachery. By the 
cruel severity of the articles of war any neglect of duty 
was punishable only by death ; but, as the court which 
convicted him considered his failure to have arisen from a 
venial error of judgment, they unanimously recommended 
him to mercy. The sentence gave rise to a debate in the 
house of commons; and, in spite of the popular feeling, 
which was eager for some victim, the house too was clearly 
desirous that the admiral should be pardoned. The blame 
of the execution of his sentence undoubtedly rests with the 
king. Pitt ventured to plead earnestly for mercy. He 
did not venture, as probably he might have done, had his 
influence with the king been greater, to insist on mercy 
being shown. The members of the court-martial separately 
made more than one effort to save a man, whom, if they 
had anticipated the fate to which they were condemning 
him, they would probably never have convicted ; but their 
efforts were in vain; and in March, to the astonishment of 
all Europe, the admiral, who had behaved throughout this 
trying time with the most dignified calmness and intrepidity, 
was shot at Portsmouth, on board the flag-ship. 

The king had been excessively displeased with the conduct 
of both Pitt and Temple during this affair, complaining that 
Temple had been personally insolent to him ; and, believing 
that the duke of Newcastle’s influence was still strong 
enough to command the support of parliament, he suddenly 
deprived them and their colleagues of their offices, and again 
called the duke to his councils. The discontent of the 
nation, which had been tranquillized by the installation of 
Pitt in office, was rekindled with tenfold vehemence by his ' 
dismissal. The city of London voted him its freedom, and 
nearly all the chief towns in the kingdom followed the 
example; to use the expression of a shrewd, though not 
always trustworthy annalist of the time, Horace Walpole, 
“for some weeks it rained gold boxes;” while, at the 


1 




GEORGE IT. 


619 


LVI.] 

same time, a placard was fixed on the gates of St. James’s a.d. 
Palace: “Wanted, a secretary of state. Honesty net 1 757- 
necessary. No principles will be treated with.” 

Newcastle was perplexed and irresolute. The king wished 
him to unite with Pox; but he had discernment enough to 
see that Pox’s unpopularity would surely drag him down 
with it; and Pitt, whose favour with the people, and weight 
in parliament, alone gave promise of a strong and lasting 
administration, had on a former occasion refused to unite 
with him at all; while an administration, which excluded 
both, was sure to be attacked by both, as he had already 
experienced. He was also alarmed, in some degree, as a 
motion for inquiry into the ministerial causes of the loss 
of Minorca had been voted, and had begun a few days after 
the dismissal of the late ministers ; and the result of the in¬ 
quiry depended greatly on the part which Pitt might take. 

Pitt, however, was not disposed to press hardly upon 
him. He was eager to return to office; and recent events 
had shown him that he could not return alone, nor stand 
alone; but that the support of the duke’s borough and 
family influence, and of his experience in managing parlia¬ 
ments, were as indispensable to him, as the aid of his 
eloquence and vigour of mind was necessary to the duke; 
and he showed his inclination for a union in a most cha¬ 
racteristic manner. He was always fond of theatrical effect; 
and, having a fit of the gout while the inquiry was pro¬ 
ceeding, he came down to the house with his legs bandaged, 
and his arm in a sling, making as ostentatious a display of 
his infirmities as if he had been a candidate for the papacy; 
and, instead of the violent harangue which was expected 
from him, he recommended moderation in a few gentle 
sentences, and led the committee to a result, wdiich, on the 
whole, was a decided acquittal of the ministers who had 
sent out Byng’s expedition. 

Still, though his moderation on this occasion was generally 
understood as a signal of his willingness to unite with the 
duke, the terms which he demanded were so high, that 
the negotiation between them was broken off. Expedient 
after expedient was proposed, considered, and rejected, till, 
at last, when the nation had been nearly three months 
without a government, lord Chesterfield undertook the office 
of mediator. He persuaded Pitt to abate somewhat of his 
demands, and Newcastle to consent to a more equal par- 








620 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. tition of power than lie had previously contemplated. The 

1757. ping most unwillingly consented to the only arrangement 
possible, comforting himself as well as he could by calling 
the nobles, who had failed to answer his expectations, 
Newcastle’s footmen; and at last the ministry, known after¬ 
wards as Pitt’s ministry, was formed, and at the end of 
June the members of it entered upon their several offices. 
The duke took the treasury, Pitt was secretary of state, 
with the lead of the house of commons, the supreme 
direction of the war, and of all the foreign affairs which 
had been previously, as has been mentioned, divided between 
two departments, while Pox was pacified and silenced by 
the office of paymaster, the most lucrative of all posts 
while the war lasted, but was not admitted to a seat in 
the cabinet. 


CHAPTER LVII. 

GEORGE IT. (CONTINUED). 

The new ministry entered upon office with happy omens, 
although as yet they knew not of them. Only five days 
before they kissed hands, a great victory had established 
the dominion of England over the whole of Bengal; and 
we must pause for a moment, to trace in a few brief lines 
the events which placed a company of merchants in a 
position to become gradually the lords of a mighty empire. 

1600— The Mogul dynasty had been established in India nearly 

1 ' 50, a century, when the English East India Company, originally 
established in the last years of the reign of Elizabeth, 
received increased privileges from James I., and from 
Charles II. the right of making peace and war with all 
powers in those countries which did not profess Christianity. 
The success of this company induced the formation of* a 
second; but the two amalgamated in the reign of queen 
Anne ; and, by granting the government frequent loans at 
low interest, easily obtained constant renewals of their 
charters. Their first factories were established at Surat, 
in the gulf of Cambay, and at Bantam, in the island of 
Java; but the Portuguese harassed the settlers at Surat, 
and the Dutch inflicted cruel outrages on the traders at 
Bantam, so that they soon abandoned both these stations, 
founded Madras, in the reign of Charles I., and received 
from Charles II. the present of Bombay, which had formed 






GEOKGE II. 


621 


LVII.] 












II 


a portion of the dower of Catharine of Braganza. They a.d. 
also established factories on the Ganges; and, soon after GOO. 
the revolution, having obtained from the great Aurungzebe 
a grant of land, they constructed a strong citadel, to which 
they gave the name of Fort William, under the protection 
of which they founded the splendid city of Calcutta, the 
capital of our Indian dominions; and Calcutta, Madras, and 
Bombay were now erected into separate presidencies, each 
having its affairs administered by a president and council, 
and keeping on foot a small military force, composed 
partly of Europeans and partly of native troops, for its 
^protection. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the hostility 
of the Dutch and of the Portuguese to the English settle¬ 
ments had nearly died out, the Dutch having almost 
wholly withdrawn from the continent of India to the islands, 
and the Portuguese power having greatly decayed. But 
the French had begun to be very formidable rivals. About 
the middle of the reign of Louis XIV. they had begun to 
turn their attention to the East, had established an East 
India Company in imitation of ours, and had obtained a set¬ 
tlement on the Ganges, a little above Calcutta, called Chan- 
dernagore. They had also founded Pondicherry, a little to 
the south of Madras, and had colonized the fertile islands of 
Mauritius and Bourbon; their seats of government being 
fixed at Pondicherry and the Mauritius, to which they had 
given the name of the isle of France. 

The recent governors of these presidencies, Dupleix and 1744— 
La Bourdonnais, had been men of great talents, but, luckily G54. 
for the English, they were not very cordial towards each 
other. In 1746, La Bourdonnais fitted out a fleet at the 
isle of Bourbon, with the design of laying siege to Madras. 
Dupleix refused his co-operation, and, when La Bourdonnais 
had taken the city, and exacted a large ransom for it, 
Dupleix complained of his enterprise as an encroachment 
upon his own province, took upon himself to violate the 
treaty into which La Bourdonnais had entered, and detained 
many of the principal English inhabitants of Madras pri¬ 
soners. The next year the English were so strongly rein¬ 
forced, that they, in their turn, laid siege to Pondicherry, 
though without success, and in 1748 the peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle compelled Dupleix to restore Madras, and to desist 
from further hostilities against the English. 










A.D. 

1749- 
1754. 


622 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [dl. 

Peace, however, was never of long duration in India. 
The native princes were incessantly quarrelling, and a dis¬ 
pute now arose between two competitors for the dignity of 
nabob or viceroy of the Catrnatic. The Trench took one 
side, the English, as a matter of course, espoused the other. 
At first the party which Dupleix supported prevailed. 
Though no soldier himself, he had an able general, the mar¬ 
quis de Bussy, under his command. Bussy defeated his 
enemies in a considerable battle; took Arcot, the capital of 
the province, and was equally successful in establishing 
another prince, whom he favoured, as the nizam, or viceroy 
of the Deccan. To commemorate his exploits, Dupleix built 
a splendid city, and adorned it w r ith a stately pillar, which 
bore on its four sides inscriptions recording his triumph. 

After the fall of Arcot, the defeated prince, with a small 
body of English troops, had fled to Trichinopoly. The 
conqueror, with his Erench allies, pursued them, laid siege 
to that town, and soon reduced it to great distress. The 
English interests in that district were in imminent peril of 
extinction. Major Lawrence, who had previously held the 
chief command of their forces, had returned to England, and 
there seemed no one of rank sufficient to supply his place, 
when the state of affairs was suddenly changed by the genius 
and valour of one man. Robert Clive, the son of a Shrop¬ 
shire country gentleman of ancient lineage, but of small 
fortune, destined to leave behind him a name second to none 
in the glorious list of those heroic spirits who have over¬ 
thrown and founded empires, was a captain in the company’s 
service, twenty-five years of age. He had come out to India 
as a writer, he had escaped from captivity in disguise, when 
Dupleix violated the capitulation of Madras, and soon after¬ 
wards had exchanged his peaceful occupations for an ensign’s 
commission. Asa soldier, his energy had recommended him 
to the favourable notice of major Lawrence, and he had 
rapidly risen to the rank of captain. He now came forward 
and suggested to the governor of the presidency, that, though 
it was impossible to relieve Trichinopoly, it might be prac¬ 
ticable to make a diversion in its favour by surprising Arcot, 
which would have the same effect. He was entrusted with 
the execution of his own plan, and in August, 1751, marched 
with 500 men to attack a city with 100,000 inhabitants. 
The very audacity of his enterprise contributed to its suc¬ 
cess. The garrison were astounded, and when they saw 















LVII.] GEORGE II. 623 

that a most fearful thunderstorm could not arrest the ad¬ 
vance of their assailants for a minute, they abandoned both 
city and citadel without striking a blow, and Clive took 
undisturbed possession of both. The nabob instantly de¬ 
tached 10,000 men from the army in front of Trichi- 
nopoly, to recover so important a stronghold. Clive made 
a gallant defence, which was protracted long enough to 
give time for some of the chieftains of the Mahrattas, a 
numerous and warlike, though predatory tribe, to come to 
his aid. Hearing of their approach, the nabob’s son deter¬ 
mined to storm the place before they could arrive. His 
soldiers, intoxicated with a drug called bang, swarmed up 
to the breaches which their artillery had made in the walls. 
A raft, loaded with picked men, crossed the fosse towards 
the weakest part of the ramparts, and troops of elephants, 
with strong iron plates on their foreheads, were driven 
against the gates. The garrison did not amount to the twen¬ 
tieth part of the number of the enemy, and of that garrison 
not one-half were Europeans. All depended on Clive ; he was 
every where; he directed so heavy a fire of musketry 
against the elephants, that they turned and fled, trampling 
down the forces behind them. Einding that his artillery¬ 
men were unskilful, he himself pointed his heavy guns with 
such fatal effect, that the raft was sunk, and large gaps were 
made in the dense array of the besiegers ; they retired 
in the night; Clive sallied out, joined his forces to those of 
the Mahratta, Morari Row, fell upon the retreating enemy, 
and gave him a severe defeat. At the beginning of the next 
year he repeated the blow, and, passing by the city and pillar 
of Dupleix, razed both to the ground, giving the natives a 
high idea of the power of a nation which treated with such 
insult the French monuments of victory and dominion. 

These exploits had scarcely been completed, when Law¬ 
rence returned, and he and Clive not only speedily relieved 
Trichinopoly, but gave the besieging army a severe defeat, 
making prisoners of the greater part of their French allies. 
The English supremacy was established over the whole 
peninsula; and Clive, whose health had been impaired by 
the climate and by his own incessant exertions, sailed for 
England. 

Two years afterwards, at the end of 1755, he returned to 
India, as governor of Fort St. David, a small station to the 
south of Madras, and was beginning to take vigorous mea- 


A.D. 

1752— 
1757. 









A.D. 

1756 - 

1759. 


624 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CIL. 

sures for the security and extension of British commerce in 
that district, when he was called to a wider theatre for his 
genius. Surajah Dowlah, the viceroy of Bengal, was only 
nineteen years of age, with a more than usually w r eak under¬ 
standing, and a more than usually ferocious temper. He 
became desirous of picking a quarrel with the British inha¬ 
bitants of Calcutta, and, on pretence that one of his officers, 
wdio had robbed him, had found refuge in that city, he seized 
the British merchants residing near his capital of Moorshe- 
dabad, and marched to attack Calcutta itself. The garrison 
was scanty, the governor was a coward. Mr. Holwell, a 
merchant of character and influence, endeavoured, in vain, 
to defend the city; and, after two days’ resistance, he was 
compelled to surrender. The English inhabitants, one hun¬ 
dred and forty-six in number, became his prisoners. He re¬ 
proached them for their resistance, but promised that their 
lives should be spared. Possibly he intended to keep his 
word, but for that night the wretched captives were left at 
the mercy of his guards, and that mercy was more terrible 
than the studied cruelty of the most despotic tyrants. It 
was midsummer, the 20th of June, a season in India which 
all the cooling inventions of art, spacious chambers, lofty 
halls, shaded verandahs, sparkling fountains, waving fans, 
and cooling beverages, can hardly render supportable to an 
inhabitant of Northern Europe, and the guards determined 
to confine all their prisoners in a single small dungeon, 
known as the Black Hole. It was with difficulty that they 
could all be forced into its narrow space; they expostulated, 
entreated, and resisted, in vain. The last were driven in at 
the sword’s point, and the door w r as then locked upon them 
till morning. No pen can describe sufferings such as no 
other band of sufferers ever felt. The stifling heat became 
intense, intolerable. Through two narrow windows the 
wretched captives in vain implored the compassion of the 
guards, who mocked them in their agony. One officer, 
more humane than the rest, did order some vessels of water 
to be brought, but they were too large to enter the windows; 
without the nabob’s order no one dared to open the door, 
and the nabob was asleep. There was no relief; some went 
mad, some implored the guards to shoot them, some died, 
and as their corpses instantly began to putrefy, aggravated 
the sufferings ol their surviving comrades. When the 
morning came, the few who were still alive could not be 





LVII.] GEORGE II. 625 

led out till the guards had cleared a lane for them by piling 
up on each side the bodies of those who had expired, and 
then one-seventh of the number who had been thrust in a 
few hours before, staggered, half-dead themselves, from that 
loathsome charnel-house. Yet was not the cruelty of the 
nabob exhausted. Those who survived were put in irons 
till they would reveal the hiding-places of the wealth which 
he believed them to have secreted ; and one lady, the only 
female of the party, was sent to his harem at Moorshe- 
dabad. 

The nabob wrote an exulting account of his exploit to his 
nominal sovereign, the great mogul; but he had little cause 
to congratulate himself. Every Englishman at Madras 
burnt to avenge his murdered countrymen; and Clive was 
sent with 900 Europeans, and 1500 native troops, (sepoys 
as they are called, from the Indian word spahi,-a soldier,) 
to inflict summary chastisement on the nabob. It was 
Christmas when he reached the mouths of the Granges. The 
garrison of Calcutta yielded after one ineffectual sally: 
he advanced and stormed Hooghly; surprised the nabob’s 
army by a night attack, routed it, though an unusually thick 
fog prevented the blow thus dealt from being as decisive as 
it otherwise would have been, and compelled surajah Dowlah 
to restore to the English all their former privileges, and to 
make compensation for all the acts of pillage which he had 
committed in the preceding year. 

It was soon discovered, however, that the nabob, in spite of 
the treaty which he had lately signed, was intriguing with 
the French; and Clive,and admiral Watson, the commander 
of the fleet, and a colleague worthy even of Clive, deter¬ 
mined to attack Chandernagore. The flag-ships of AYatson 
and of Powell, his second in command, sailed up the Ganges, 
and poured so destructive a fire into the town, that it was 
soon rendered untenable; the garrison surrendered, and 
Clive flattered himself that this success would terrify the 
nabob into fidelity to his engagements. 

It had the contrary effect; it made him only the more 
eager to deliver himself from such formidable neighbours, 
and he redoubled his solicitations to Bussy, who had made 
himself master of the country of the Northern Cirears as far 
as Ganjam, and who was little more than 200 miles from 
Calcutta; but his fickleness and cruelty had excited the 
contempt and hatred of many of his own subjects, and a 

s s 


.A.D 

1757 

1759 






626 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. party had been formed to dethrone him, and to put the 

17&7* general of his forces, Meer Jaffier, in his place. The con¬ 
spiracy was communicated to the English at Calcutta; 
Clive promised to support it with all his power, and began 
to march towards Moorshedabad, with about 1000 European 
and 2000 native troops, and nine small field-pieces. Surajali 
Dowlah drew out his army, consisting of 35,000 infantry, 
15,000 cavalry, and upwards of forty guns of large calibre, and 
encamped near the village of Plassey. It was the 21st of 
June; only one year and one day had elapsed since the 
miserable remnant of the nabob’s prisoners had tottered out 
of the Black Hole, and already the hour of retribution had 
arrived. When the English reached the banks of the 
Hooghly, Clive, pondering anxiously 011 the vast disparity of 
the two armies, for a while faltered in his resolution, and 
called a council of war. Many years afterwards, he said 
that he had never called but one, and that if he had been 
guided by that one, he should have ruined the company. 
As is usually the case, the majority decided for cautious 
measures: Clive agreed with them, and resolved not to 
attack; but such a resolution was too much at variance with 
his natural disposition to be long persevered in. Again and 
again he reconsidered it, taking counsel of himself alone, 
till he decided on abandoning it, led his troops across the 
river, and before daybreak on the 23rd heard the drums and 
cymbals in the hostile camp. The sentinels had given 
notice of their approach, and at dawn the nabob marched 
to attack them. For some hours both armies contented 
themselves with a distant and ineffective cannonade ; but 
when some of his most distinguished cavalry officers had 
fallen beneath the more skilful aim of Clive’s artillerymen, 
surajah Dowlah began to retire in some disorder, and Clive 
took instant advantage of the movement to charge him with 
his whole force. The defeat of the enemy was instanta¬ 
neous ; they fled, the nabob among the first, so rapidly, that 
the slaughter was but trifling; but they left behind them 
their whole artillery and baggage, and the empire of India 
as the prize of the victory. 

Clive’s whole loss in killed and wounded amounted to 
only seventy-two men. He installed Meer Jaffier as the 
nabob of Bengal; and, in return, the English fleet, army, 
and especially their commanders, were amply enriched by 
the gratitude of the new prince. 




LVII.] GEORGE II. 627 

The India Company showed its gratitude by appointing 
its heroic preserver governor of Bengal; and one of his 
first acts displayed that appreciation of the genius of others 
which is one of the surest marks of genius in the judge, and 
one of the most valuable qualities in a ruler of many people. 
He appointed as resident agent at the court of the new 
nabob a young man, twenty-six years of age, Warren 
Hastings, the only man, gallant, able, and virtuous as most 
of the rulers of India have been, who has equalled his own 
renown on that theatre of mighty spirits and mighty actions. 
Clive had won Bengal like a great soldier, he ruled it like a 
great statesman. The mere terror of his name dispersed a 
large army with which shah Alum, the eldest son of the 
great mogul, was besieging Patna ; a detachment which he 
sent, under colonel Forde, against the French settlements 
in the Northern Circars met with great success, and took 
Masulipatam, the most important of the French cities ; while 
his measures for the revival and extension of the Calcutta 
trade were equally vigorous, judicious, and successful. 

Meer Jafiier began to be alarmed at the power of his ally, 
and tempted the Hutch, who shared his feelings, to send a 
formidable expedition up the Hooghly, under the plea of 
applying for redress for some alleged grievances. Clive was 
placed in a difficult position, for, if he allowed the Hutch 
troops to unite with those of Meer Jaffier, he ran a risk of 
being overpowered by their combination ; if he attacked the 
Hutch, he was putting to hazard the peace between them 
and the English in Europe: moreover, his army was greatly 
weakened by different detachments which he had sent out, and 
the fleet had lately quitted the Bay of Bengal; but he formed 
his decision in a moment, and sent Forde, who had lately re¬ 
turned from his expedition against the Circars, to attack 
them. The Hutch were completely defeated, and, at the 
beginning of 1760, Clive returned to England to receive the 
reward of his achievements in the applause and admiration 
of his countrymen. 

Though the greatest, his were not only the triumphs of 
the English in India during these years. A new French 
governor, LallJ Tollendal, had been making vigorous efforts 
to re-establish the supremacy of his nation in the Carnatic. 
He arrived in Hindostan in April, 1758; speedily retook 
Arcot, and laid siege to Madras. Ilis attempt on that city 
failed; and in the latter part of the next year, colonel Eyre 

s s 2 


A.D. 

1757 - 

1760 . 






A.D. 

1759 - 

1761 . 


1757— 

1700. 


628 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Coote arrived from England with a reinforcement of English 
troops considerable for those times, when an English army 
in India was reckoned by hundreds instead of thousands or 
tens of thousands. Coote had already distinguished himself 
for daring valour; in the council of war before Plassey he 
was one of the few who had given his voice for an immediate 
attack, and he had likewise great skill in his profession. 
He had scarcely landed when he advanced inland, took 
"Wandewash, a strong fort from which the British had been 
repulsed before his arrival; and, in January, 1760, gave 
Lally a severe defeat beneath the walls of the same fortress. 

A new reign had commenced before he finished his cam¬ 
paign ; but, to connect the Indian achievements of this 
period together, we nnlst carry our story on to January, 
1761, when, after a siege of five weeks, and a most gallant 
resistance by Lally and his garrison, Coote took Pondi¬ 
cherry, and terminated the French dominion in India. At 
a later period we shall find him nobly sustaining his well- 
won reputation by fresh exploits. 


CHAPTEK LVIII. 

GEORGE II. (CONTINUED). 

Pitt’s avowed policy was to consist mainly in a vigorous 
prosecution of war. The English treaty with Prussia had 
been followed by a similar union between France and 
Austria, which the genius of Kaunitz had effected in oppo¬ 
sition to the conduct of the French ministers ever since the 
time of Bichelieu, whose aims had been steadily directed to 
bridling the power of the house of Hapsburg; Poland, 
Saxony, and Bussia joined the alliance; and Frederic, 
obtaining information of the confederacy which had been 
formed against him, had, in the preceding year, anticipated 
his enemies, by beginning the seven years’ war, and pouring 
his unexpected battalions into Saxony; but, while the 
ministerial arrangements in England were in the unsettled 
state mentioned in the last chapter, Frederic had been 
reduced to great extremities by his defeat at Kolin; and his 
disasters in that quarter prevented him from affording any 
aid to the duke of Cumberland, who, with 50,000 men from 
Hanover and other German states, was severely pressed on 
the Weser by a French army of very superior numbers. 





GEORGE II. 


629 


LVIII.] 

Towards the end of July he was defeated at Hastenbeck; 
and, finding his communications entirely cut off, he shortly 
afterwards concluded a convention at Closter Leven, by 
virtue of which the different contingents, which made up 
his army, returned to their several countries; so that Hano¬ 
ver and its dependencies were left at the mercy of the 
French soldiers, who pillaged it in the most ruthless manner. 
The king was indignant beyond measure, and vented the 
whole of his displeasure on the duke, whom he recalled in 
disgrace, and reproached before the whole court; yet, though 
the duke had not shown much military ability, he had 
resisted a superior force with great courage and resolution 
as long as resistance was possible; and the terms which he 
had procured were more favourable than he had any right 
to expect; in fact, the duke de Richelieu incurred the dis¬ 
pleasure of his court for making any convention with an 
army which, with a very slight exertion of energy, he might 
have destroyed or forced to surrender. 

Pitt endeavoured to counterbalance this disaster by vigor¬ 
ous attacks on the maritime frontier of France, fitting out 
expeditions against Rochefort, Cherbourg, and St. Malo, 
which met with but slight success, and which could not 
possibly have gained any advantage equal to the vast 
expense of the armaments employed. He tried also to 
engage Spain to unite with England in war against France, 
offering to restore Gibraltar if by her aid he was enabled to 
recover Minorca; but, happily perhaps for his reputation 
with posterity, his offers were rejected, and the court of 
Madrid resolved on maintaining its neutrality. 

But if the measures of the government in Europe were 
attended with but slight or doubtful benefit, in Africa and 
America their triumphs were glorious and decisive. On 
the African coast an expedition reduced the forts at the 
mouth of the Senegal and the island of Goree, destroying 
the French commerce in that quarter; while in America 
operations, carried on on a larger scale, had the most 
uniform and complete success. Pitt’s plan comprehended 
the reduction of the islands of Cape Breton and St. John’s, 
afterwards called Prince Edward’s Island, of the French 
forts on the borders of the two lakes, George and Cham¬ 
plain, “the gates of Canada,” as they were called in 
that 'country, and, finally, of the extensive and valuable 
province of Canada itself; and he chose his agents with 


A.D. 

1757 — 

1759 . 






630 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

great judgment. The fleet was put under the command, 
of admiral Boscawen, the army under general Amherst and. 
general Wolfe. Lord Loudon, whose incompetency and. 
inactivity had provoked the sarcasm of the Americans, that 
he was like St. George on an inn-sign, always on horseback, 
but never advancing, and who had allowed the marquis de 
Montcalm, an able and enterprising commander, to pro¬ 
secute his operations without disturbance, was recalled; 
but, unluckily, his want of ability had so concealed the 
still greater incapacity of general Abercromby, his second 
in command, that he was left at the head of the finest 
British force that had ever been seen in America. At the 
head of 16,000 men he was sent to attack Ticonderoga, an 
important fort on the narrow neck of land between the two 
lakes. Montcalm had barely one-fourth of his number; 
but he took up a strong position in front of the fort, and 
awaited the attack. In a preliminary skirmish the British 
gained a slight advantage, though it was dearly purchased 
by the death of lord Howe, an officer of the highest promise, 
and the chief object of the confidence and affections of the 
army: but the next day they were repulsed with terrible 
slaughter from an assault on the main works of the enemy ; 
and the whole force would have been destroyed, but for 
the skill and coolness of colonel Bradstreet, who by great 
exertions restored order among the routed and disordered 
battalions, and in some degree retrieved the reputation of 
the troops by a well-judged expedition against the important 
fortress of Frontemac, on Lake Ontario. 

The other parts of Pitt’s plans were executed without 
the slightest alloy of failure. Fort Luquesne was taken 
without resistance, and received the new name of Pittsburg, 
in compliment to the minister; but the great achievement 
was the conquest of Canada. After the fall of Cape Breton in 
the preceding year, Wolfe had returned home from ill health ; 
but as soon as his strength was recruited, he was again 
eager for employment, and Pitt, who had conceived a high 
opinion of his abilities, entrusted him with the command 
of the force destined to attack Quebec; another army, 
under general Johnson, was to threaten Montreal; and 
Amherst, with the troops in the command of which Aber¬ 
cromby had been superseded, was to renew the attack upon 
Ticonderoga, and, if successful, to push forward, and unite 
with Wolfe. 







GEORGE II. 


631 


LVIII.] 

Johnson defeated the French, and took the fort of Niagara ; 
but by the time that this was accomplished, it was too late in 
the season for him to proceed towards Montreal before the 
winter. Amherst compelled the French to retire from 
Ticonderoga; but, finding it necessary to his safe advance 
to obtain the command of Lake Champlain, he was forced 
to employ the remainder of the summer in constructing 
boats, and to postpone further operations till the next year. 
"Wolfe’s success was more immediate and more decisive. 
With 8000 men he had embarked on board the fleet, com¬ 
manded by admiral Saunders, who afforded him the most 
skilful and zealous co-operation; and in June they entered 
the St. Lawrence, and the troops were landed on the isle 
of Orleans, in front of Quebec. To defend this city, the 
capital of Lower Canada, Montcalm had about i0,000 
men; but the greater portion of this garrison consisted not 
of French soldiers, but of Canadians and Indians, as fear¬ 
less as the French, but less imbued with the spirit of 
discipline, and less to be relied on for the steady resolution 
which is perhaps more required in resisting than in con¬ 
ducting an attack. The fortifications of the city were 
weak; but its natural advantages were of the most formid¬ 
able description. It stands on a table-land, protected on 
t.wo sides by the river St. Charles and the river St. 
Lawrence, the banks of which are formed by high steep 
rocks, almost inaccessible; a little below the town, another 
river, the Montmorency, falls into the St. Lawrence, and, 
in a great degree, protects a third side; and behind the 
Montmorency Montcalm took up a strong position, having 
his rear covered by impenetrable woods, so that neither 
his army nor the city entrusted to his charge could be 
attacked on equal terms. Wolfe erected batteries on the 
opposite bank of the river, and on the isle of Orleans, 
which, however, were not able to do any important damage 
to the enemy, who, in their turn, were more than once 
baffled by the vigilance of Saunders in their attempts to 
burn the fleet by fire-ships. At last, when more than a 
month had elapsed without any progress being made, Wolfe 
crossed the Montmorency, and attacked the French lines, 
but was driven back with considerable loss. He was greatly 
dispirited by all the circumstances of his situation. Though 
the news had reached him of Amherst’s and Johnson’s 
success, there seemed no probability of either being able 


A.D. 

175J). 










632 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. to join him. Disease had greatly thinned his own numbers; 

1759. the beginning of September be began to despair of 
success, and wrote to his employers in England letters full 
of melancholy anticipation, which tilled the kingdom with 
despondency. Three days after they arrived there came 
an express with the news that Quebec was taken. 

The news was true. As he was gazing from his camp at 
the apparently unassailable position of the French army, the 
idea suddenly occurred to him to scale the heights on which 
it stood, trusting that the apparent impossibility of such an 
enterprise might facilitate it by preventing Montcalm’s 
attention from being turned in that direction. The idea 
was no sooner conceived than it was executed. Soon after 
midnight, on the 13th of September, the troops were 
embarked on board the boats of the fleet, and transported 
up the St. Lawrence to a point about two miles above the 
city. They found a narrow and overgrown path up the rock, 
along which the men scrambled with difficulty. They had 
nearly arrived at the top before they were heard by the French 
picket, and, when they were heard, the night was too dark 
for the fire which the sentries directed down the cliff to have 
any effect. When the leading files reached the summit, 
they found that the picket had fled; they at once formed 
in line, company after company followed, the artillerymen 
succeeded in dragging up one gun, and at dawn nearly 
4000 British soldiers stood ready for battle in front of the 
enemy. 

Montcalm could hardly believe the messengers who 
brought him the first information of the position of Wolfe’s 
army ; but when he had ascertained the truth of it, he made 
no doubt of crushing them with his superior numbers. He 
speedily advanced to the attack, while his skirmishers kept 
up an incessant fire, and his Indian troops spread themselves 
out to the right with the view of turning the British position 
in that direction. The British stood firm, reserving their 
fire till the French were within forty yards, when they deli¬ 
vered it with a fatal precision, which threw the assailants 
into disorder. As they wavered, Wolfe himself sprung for¬ 
ward, cheering on his men to the charge. The French fled 
in disorder, but, at the moment of victory, Wolfe, who had 
already received two severe wounds, was pierced in the chest 
by a third, and fell dying to the ground. Monckton, the 
next general, was also dangerously wounded, and the com- 





GEORGE II. 


G33 


LVIII.] 


mand devolved on general Townshend. At the beginning 
of the action Montcalm also had been killed, and his second 
in command had been mortally wounded. Those who suc¬ 
ceeded them had not sufficient authority with the men to 
attempt to rally them, nor to maintain the defence of the 
city. On the 18th they capitulated, on condition of being 
allowed to return to Trance, and Townshend took possession 
of Quebec. 

In his despatch to the government, Townshend endea¬ 
voured to appropriate all the honour of the victory to him¬ 
self, but the truth was easily discovered, and the admiration 
of, and sorrow for the conqueror who had fallen, was uni¬ 
versal. His remains were brought to England, and interred 
with great pomp, and a monument was ordered to be erected 
at the public expense in Westminster Abbey, to preserve his 
memory, and to stimulate others to similar achievements, by 
the example of his heroism and of his country’s gratitude. 

That no scene of action might be without its triumph, 
the arms of England were further graced by a naval victory 
of a most decisive character. Admiral sir Edward Hawke, 
with a splendid fleet, had blockaded the Trench in the har¬ 
bour of Brest during the whole of the summer; but, when 
the equinoctial gales had driven him from his post, Conflans, 
the Trench admiral, sallied out with twenty-five ships, in 
the hope of overpowering a smaller squadron, which was 
cruising to the southward, under captain Huff. Before, 
however, he could overtake Huff, Hawke had returned, 
united his fleet with Huff’s squadron, so as to be somewhat 
superior in numbers to Conflans, pursued him, and compelled 
him to seek shelter in the mouth of the Yilaine. The 
entrance of this river is so guarded by rocks on the one side, 
and shoals and quicksands on the other, that there is not a 
more dangerous spot on the whole coast; but, in spite of 
every obstacle, Hawke determined to attack the enemy, and, 
though two of his own ships ran ashore, which he was forced 
to abandon after taking out their crews, he took two of the 
Trench ships, sank four more, and drove the rest up the 
river, many of them being too much disabled to be capable 
of being used again. 

The exultation produced at home by these triumphs was 
unbounded ; the parliament voted loyal addresses and liberal 
supplies, scarcely even criticizing a speech of Pitt’s in com¬ 
mendation of the principle of raising money by excise duties, 


A.D. 

1759 . 





634 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1759— 
17 CO. 


or comparing it with his speeches against Walpole’s excise 
bill at the outset of his career. Nor was the general joy 
much damped by a certain degree of discredit which attached 
to the conduct of a British commander at the battle of Minden. 
Prince Ferdinand, Frederic’s general in Westphalia, had 
with him a force of about 10,000 British soldiers, under the 
commaud of lord George Sackville, an officer of undoubted 
abilities, but of a wayward and impracticable temper, though 
not hitherto supposed to be of questionable courage. At 
Minden, on the 1st of August, the prince entrapped a far 
more numerous armv of the French into making an attack 
upon him, which he easily repelled; he then defeated, and 
would have completely routed his assailants, had it not been 
for the disobedience of lord George, who, when the prince’s 
aides-de-camp brought him an order to charge with the 
whole of his cavalry, under the plea that the two messages 
which he then received were of a contradictory character, 
declined to advance, suffered the opportunity to pass by, and 
the French to retreat almost unmolested. The prince, vexed 
at the French army having thus escaped from destruction, 
reflected severely on lord George’s conduct, in an order of 
the day, expressing his wish that the second in command, lord 
Granby (who was well known to be greatly inferior in ability 
to lord George) had commanded the British cavalry, and his 
belief that in that case the issue of the day would have been 
far more triumphant. The real cause of lord George’s mis¬ 
conduct was attributed, by his enemies, to cowardice, by his 
friends, to jealousy of the prince : both charges were almost 
equally disgraceful. On his return to England he was de¬ 
prived of all his employments, and a court-martial, which sat 
to inquire into his conduct, pronounced him incapable of 
serving his majesty in any military capacity for the future. 

Pitt was now at the height of his glory. He had raised 
the spirit of the whole people, so that they thought them¬ 
selves a match for the world in arms. To quote the words 
of Walpole, the first question that every one asked in the 
morning was, “ What new victory was annouced ?” and the 
parliament seconded his views with such liberality that, 
again to recur to the expressions of the same lively writer, 
“ He had no more chance of hearing ‘ No ’ from the house 
of commons than a suitor would have of receiving such an 
answer from an old maid.” Even the king, alwavs fond of 
war, was fully reconciled to him by the unexampled series 















GEORGE II. 


635 


LVIII.] 

of triumphs lately witnessed, and which had not yet ter- a.d. 
minated. The year 1760 brought news of the reduction of 17n,) - 
Montreal and of the whole of Upper Canada, and in the 
midst of the joy caused by this event the king suddenly 
died of a complaint of the heart, in the seventy-seventh 
year of his age, and the thirty-fourth of his reign. 

With the exception of a moderate capacity for war, 
George II. had no great talents and no great virtues. He 
never gave proof of any statesmanlike-ability ; but his chief 
fault as a king of England was his partiality for Hanover, 
and his preference for Hanoverian over English interests, 
which of all errors w r as the one least likely to be excusable 
in the eyes of a proud and jealous nation like the English. 

His humanity too was impeached, because of the severities 
exercised against the Jacobites in 1746, and in subsequent 
years when some of them fell into his power; though on 
the other hand he spared the Pretender himself, being per¬ 
fectly aware of his being in London a few years after the 
rebellion,- and forbidding the secretary of state to molest him. 

Yet, though he was neither loved nor respected, his reign 
was eminently prosperous; at home his family was secured 
on the throne by the overthrow of the only hostile claimant; 
abroad immense additions were made to his dominions in 
both hemispheres. Still in some respects his authority may 
seem to have been inferior to that of his predecessors; their 
personal predilections, whenever they were energetically dis¬ 
played, were sufficient to establish or to maintain a ministry ; 
but George II. several times found himself overborne in this 
respect by the growing power of the parliament. He was 
unable to keep Walpole, he was compelled to keep New¬ 
castle, he could not enable Carteret to stand for an hour, 
and he was forced to admit Pitt to his cabinet in spite of 
the personal offence which he had taken at many parts of 
his previous conduct. This had been the theory of the 
constitution, at all events ever since the revolution; but it 
had not hitherto been its practice: and its gradual establish¬ 
ment, which may be looked upon as almost complete at the 
end of this reign, marks a great advance in the general 
understanding by all parties of the proper principles of 
government, and a great improvement in the political con¬ 
dition of the people, to whom a parliamentary control over 
the appointment of the ministers of the crown is indispensable 
for the enjoyment and preservation of their legitimate rights. 






636 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER LIX. 

GEORGE III. 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Emperors, a.d. 
Francis 1. 

Joseph II. . .1765 

Leopold . . . 1790 

Francis II. 5 . 1792 

France. 

Louis XV. 

Louis XVI. . .1774 
Republic . . . 1792 

Napoleon . . 1804 

Louis XVIII. . 1814 


Spain. a.d. 
Ferdinand VI. 

Charles IV. . .1788 

Ferdinand VII. . 1808 
Prussia. 
Frederic II. 

Frederic III. . 1780 
Frederic IV, . 1797 

Hungary Bohemia. 
Maria Teresa. 


Russia. a.d. 
Elizabeth. 

Peter III. . . 1762 

Catharine II. . 1703 
Paul . . ... 1797 
Alexander . .1801 

Popes. 
Clement XIII. 
Clement XIV. . 1769 
Pius VI. . . . 1775 
Pius VII. . . 1800 


a.d. On the 25th of October, 1760, George III. ascended 
1700. the throne, and commenced the longest reign recorded in 
the British annals,—a reign at first disturbed by violent 
factions, and sullied by the loss of flourishing colonies, but 
ending in a blaze of unparalleled military glory, and marked 
throughout its whole period with the most splendid dis¬ 
plays of political, literary, and scientific genius, with 
wondrous discoveries, and with constantly increasing pros¬ 
perity, though the sovereign himself, suffering under the 
heaviest afflictions with which Providence chastises his 
creatures, was in his latter years insensible alike to the 
renown gained by his subjects, and to the reverential 
affection with which they regarded his declining age. He 
was now twenty-two years old, good-looking in his person, 
and acute in his intellect, (though his mother, the princess 
of Wales, had allowed his education to be sadly neglected,) 
dignified in his demeanour, temperate and religious in his 
habits and disposition. 

His accession was hailed with general satisfaction by the 
people, who had looked upon the two last sovereigns in a 
great degree as foreigners, and who were pleased at again 
having a prince on the throne, who, as having been born 
among themselves, might be expected to be free from the 
Hanoverian partialities which had greatly contributed to 
the unpopularity of his predecessors. He was not unaware 
of the favour which this circumstance gave him in their 

5 Who, in 1804, took the title of emperor of Austria, instead of that of 
emperor of Germany. 







LIX.] GEORGE III. 637 

eyes; and, in the speech with which, three weeks after his 
accession, he opened his first parliament, he alluded to it 
in a paragraph, which he himself had composed, and in 
which he avowed that, as having been “born and educated 
in this country, he gloried in the name of Briton.” 

The parliament gave abundant indications of the good 
will with which it looked forward to the new order of things, 
by the unanimity with which it voted a far larger revenue 
than had ever been proposed. The national debt had been 
greatly increased by the cost of the late campaigns, and the 
supplies amounted to nearly 20,000,000/. of money; while 
the civil list was increased to 800,000/. a year. Even the great 
Jacobite families began to relax their old prejudices in favour 
of an English-born sovereign, and flocked to the levee, 
where the new king gave opportunities for drawing a 
further contrast between himself and his grandfather by 
the affability and unpretending courtesy of his behaviour. 
Their open adherence to the government was in some degree 
perhaps brought about by the introduction into the privy 
council of lord Bute, who was supposed, on good grounds, 
to have at one time viewed the claims of the Pretender with 
any thing but disfavour. 

The open favour which he enjoyed was the first circum¬ 
stance which impaired the popularity of the new reign. It 
was generally imputed to an improper intimacy with the 
princess of Wales ; and the king had hardly been a week 
on the throne when the cry began to be raised against 
Scotch favourites, and petticoat government. Nor was 
Bute’s own conduct calculated to allay the clamour raised 
against him. On the contrary, being a weak, narrow¬ 
minded man, he had no resources but a series of jobs 
and intrigues, in comparison with which the cabals and 
manoeuvres of Newcastle were high-minded designs. The 
existing state of affairs, however, conducted him of neces¬ 
sity to a line of policy that might have been beneficial 
to the nation, had it been carried out with magnanimity 
and steadiness. The other secretary of state besides Pitt 
w r as lord Holderness, a nobleman distinguished neither for 
abilities, nor for the want of them. Bute easily persuaded 
the king to transfer the seals from Holderness to himself; 
but the real obstacle to his supremacy was Pitt, who by 
the late movement had become his colleague, and who, as 


A.D. 

1760 — 

1761. 





HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


638 



a.d. long as he remained in office, was sure to occupy the first 
1761. place in the eyes of the nation and of Europe. 

Pitt, however, was essentially a war minister; and, in 
order to carry on the war with effect, he had involved the 
country in continental alliances, which nothing but the 
splendid successes of the last three years could have made 
tolerable to the nation. Bute now determined to re-establish 
peace, and to release the kingdom from its foreign con¬ 
nexions, being well assured that, in spite of the glories of 
the last campaigns, no measures would be more acceptable; 
and his views were likely to be facilitated by the unpopularity 
of the war in France, upon which country the chief losses 
had fallen, producing such severe and general distress, that 
the duke de Choiseul, the French minister, had openly 
stated his wish for peace, and had invited the belligerent 
powers to send plenipotentiaries to a congress at Augsburg, 
with a view to the termination of hostilities; while, at the 
same time, he sent a separate ambassador to London to 
arrange the colonial questions which more particularly 
affected France and England, and the English ministry 
sent one to Paris. Pitt interposed some delays, in order 
to give time for the reduction of Belleisle, off the coast of 
Brittany, the possession of which, though an island of no 
real value, was yet so indispensable to the French honour, 
that he expected to be able to exchange it for Minorca. 
It was taken, though not without a gallant resistance on 
the part of the garrison; and, about the same time, the 
news arrived of the fall of Pondicherry, and of a victory 
gained at Ivirchdenhein, by prince Ferdinand, over the prince 
de Soubise, in which lord Granby retrieved the English 
honour, which lord George Sackville’s misconduct atMinden 
had somewhat tarnished. 

But the prospect of peace, though thus promising, was 
broken off by the completion of the amicable arrangements 
between France and Spain, which, though kept as secret 
as possible, had been for some time the subject of negotia¬ 
tion between the two powers. The Spaniards fancied that 
they had solid grounds of complaint against England, and 
both Spaniards and French were offended at the high tone 
which Pitt, and those who were in his confidence, took with 
respect to every matter in dispute. 

Pitt had obtained accurate information of the agreement 








GEORGE III. 


G39 


LIX.] 

of the two courts through marshal Keith, who, beiug exiled 
from his country for his former connexion with the Pre¬ 
tender, preserved so much patriotic affection for it, as led 
him to give the king’s ministers the earliest information of 
the designs of its enemies, and earned, with honour to 
himself, the reversal of the sentence pronounced against him 
in former times. 

The union of the two courts was placed beyond a doubt 
by the act of the French ambassador, M. Bussy, who pre¬ 
sented to the English secretary a memorial from the Spanish 
ministers, embodying the chief grievances of which they 
complained. Pitt, with proper dignity, refused to receive 
a Spanish state paper from any hands but those of a Spanish 
ambassador, and at the same time laying before the whole 
cabinet a detail of the warlike preparations which Spain 
was making, and ample proof of those preparations being 
the consequence of a secret compact with France, with 
which country we were at war, he urged his colleagues to 
consent to an immediate declaration of war against Spain, 
and on their refusal to agree to such a step, he and lord 
Temple, his brother-in-law, resigned their offices. 

Their resignation left the whole power of the kingdom 
in Bute’s hands. He was quite as timid as he was inca¬ 
pable ; and he was now afraid of two things at once. He 
feared lest the people in general should resent Pitt’s having 
been compelled to resign by his differences with his col¬ 
leagues ; he feared still more lest Pitt himself should show 
his displeasure by attacking those who remained behind; 
and he thought that he obviated both difficulties with 
great address by persuading the king to confer a peerage 
on Mrs. Pitt, and a pension for three lives on Pitt himself. 
In some respects he did not miscalculate. Pitt’s enemies, 
and he had many, accused him openly of having sold his 
country; and when lord Bristol, the English ambassador 
at Madrid, assured the court of the pacific disposition of 
Spain, it was believed, even by many of his friends, that 
Pitt had exaggerated the danger from a fondness for war; 
but lord Bristol’s despatch was hardly sent off when he 
found reason to retract his opinion. The ships which were 
expected, laden with the riches of the West, arrived safe in 
the Spanish ports; and, as soon as all danger ot their 
being intercepted was past, the tone assumed by the Spanish 
ministers was more arrogant than ever. At last they 


A.n. 

17G1. 



A.D. 

1762 . 


640 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

ordered Bristol to leave Madrid, and at tlie opening of the 
new year war was declared. 

Pitt’s triumph was complete. Bute, however, pursued his 
plan of breaking off the foreign connexions of the king¬ 
dom, and discontinued the yearly subsidy which had been 
granted to Prussia; and, in the debates on the subject in 
the house of commons, Mr. George Grenville, though Pitt’s 
brother-in-law, attacked the profusion with which he had 
carried on the German wars with great vehemence; but 
almost at the same time he was forced to propose a large 
vote of money to aid Portugal, against which Prance and 
Spain declared war, solely on the ground of her close 
alliance with England. Pitt supported the subsidy to 
Portugal, and Bute was now so confident of his power, 
that he ventured to deprive Newcastle of the treasury, 
which he took himself; Mr. George Grenville succeeded 
him as secretary of state; and sir Francis Dashwood, a 
dissolute man, not without talents, but without the slightest 
knowledge of business, and especially ignorant of finance, 
was made chancellor of the exchequer. 

For a while, however, matters went on prosperously. 
The spirit which Pitt had infused into our naval and military 
services was still alive. One expedition, under general 
Monckton and admiral Bodney, took Martinico, and several 
of the adjacent islands; another, under lord Albemarle 
and sir George Pocock, reduced the Havannah; while in the 
East sir William Draper, with a small force, took Manilla, the 
chief city of the Philippine Islands, and some of the richest 
galleons became prizes to our cruisers. The entire loss to 
the Spaniards amounted to above four millions of money ; 
and one large mass of bullion was borne in triumph through 
the streets of London the morning that the prince of Wales 
was born. 

For the king had been married the preceding year to 
the princess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh Strelitz. It was 
commonly believed that he had fallen in love with lady 
Sarah Lennox, the beautiful sister of the duke of Eichmond, 
and that the princess dowager, who would gladly have 
preserved her authority over him by keeping him single, 
finding that that was beyond her power, proposed the 
princess of Mecklenburgh to him, and that her influence 
and that of Bute prevailed over the king’s personal pre¬ 
dilections. 







GEORGE III. 


641 


LIX.] 

< The advantages thus gained over Spain did not, however, 
diminish Bute’s anxiety for peace; and before the end of 
the year, a treaty was concluded with both France and 
Spain, by which we restored to France most of the islands 
which we had taken, but retained our conquests on the 
American continent, while they also agreed to keep no 
troops, and to build no fortresses in the East Indies. They 
exchanged Minorca for Belleisle, and demolished the forti¬ 
fications of Dunkirk. We restored Havannah to Spain, 
receiving Florida as a compensation for it. It cannot be 
said that this was a dishonourable, or a disadvantageous 
peace for England, though it was vehemently attacked by 
the minister’s enemies, who were daily increasing, and 
though it has since been often objected to as failing to 
correspond to the unequalled series of victories bv which 
the war had been distinguished. There could be no doubt 
of the formidable opposition which it would encounter in 
parliament. All the friends of Pitt, all the friends of 
Newcastle, all who hated Bute as a Scotchman, all who 
despised him for the means by which he had risen to power, 
those also who believed, and they were neither few nor 
unimportant persons, that he had been bribed with French 
gold to agree to such conditions, were sure to unite in 
condemning a measure which he was known to regard as 
the key-stone of his policy, while at the same time libels, 
lampoons, and caricatures were abundantly resorted to, to 
raise a feeling against him among the populace. They 
were easily excited. Pitt had long been their idol, and they 
were delighted to show their disdain of all who differed, 
from him. Bute’s name was John ; so in punning derision 
they hoisted a jack-boot on a gallows, and committed it, 
often accompanied by a petticoat, as an emblem of the 
princess dowager, to the flames. Bute postponed attack¬ 
ing his lampooners, but applied himself without delay to 
securing a majority in parliament to support the peace. 
His task was the more difficult, because the whole of his 
cabinet was not believed to approve of it very warmly. Mr. G-. 
Grenville, in particular, who led the commons, was doubted; 
while in the lords the duke of Cumberland, the king’s 
uncle, whose influence had increased greatly of late years, 
was loud in condemnation of some of the conditions. 
Grenville was removed from the secretaryship to the admi¬ 
ralty ; and Fox, though still only paymaster, was admitted 


A.D. 

1762 — 

1763. 






642 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. to the cabinet, and was entrusted with the conduct of the 

'7^3. discussion in the lower house. He relied on two means,— 
shameless bribery, and still more shameless intimidation. In 
one morning he is said to have paid 25,000Z. for votes in 
the commons on this particular question. His intimidation 
was not confined to members of parliament. The duke of 
Devonshire, the lord chamberlain, was deprived of his office 
with circumstances of studied insult, then of his lord- 
lieutenancy, and the king himself ordered his name to be 
struck off the list of privy councillors. Several other lords- 
lieutenant were also dismissed; and as the number of 
peers on whom the anger of the court could personally fall 
was limited, it descended on holders of even the most trifling 
situations in the government offices, for whose welfare lords 
hostile to the peace were supposed to be solicitous. By 
' these iniquitous methods a large majority was secured; 
but the feeling which they had excited had not strengthened 
the government, and they could not often be repeated; 
yet Bute’s next measure provoked more hostility than even 
the peace. His chancellor of the exchequer proposed an 
excise duty on cider. It has been already related how 
fiercely excise duties were opposed in the time of AValpole; 
and the dislike of them was not abated. The outcry now 
raised against this tax broke up the ministry. Bute retired 
in alarm, and was succeeded at the treasury by Mr. Gren¬ 
ville, who also became chancellor of the exchequer, while 
Box was made a peer, by the title of lord Holland. 

Grenville’s was a shortlived ministry, but his policy pro¬ 
duced results which will never be forgotten. His efforts to 
crush one of the most worthless of the king’s subjects ended 
in establishing in England the liberty of the press ; his 
stamp act brought about the independence of America. 
John Wilkes, the member for Aylesbury, was a ruined pro¬ 
fligate, of singular ugliness, of eminent wit, and of a most 
factious and unscrupulous spirit. His wit and licentious¬ 
ness had procured him the intimacy of sir Erancis Dashwood 
and lord Sandwich, one of the secretaries of state, and his 
factious spirit had recommended him to lord Temple, who 
had always some dirty intrigue or other on foot, for which 
he wanted tools of such a character. On the accession of 
lord Bute to power Wilkes set up a paper called the 
“ North Briton,” in which the king, the queen, the princess 
dowager, the favourite, and the favourite’s countrymen, the 




GEORGE 111. 


G43 


LIX.] 

Scotch, were made objects of ceaseless invective and ridicule, a.d. 
On Bute’s resignation, the “North Briton” was stopped for H63. 
a short time ; but a fortnight after the seals had been delivered 
to Grenville, a fresh number, XLY., was issued, attacking in 
no measured language the boasts, contained in the king’s 
speech, of the satisfaction felt bv the king of Prussia at the 
termination of the war, and of the obligations which he 
acknowledged to the English court for its exertions in his 
favour, while it was well known that that monarch did, in 
fact, look upon himself as having been deserted and betrayed 
by England, and that he cherished the warmest resentment 
against the whole country. 

The number in question was far less violent than many 
which had preceded it, and would not at the present day 
excite any animadversion. A careful distinction was made 
between the acts of the sovereign and those of his ministers, 
and he himself was spoken of as a prince of many great 
and amiable qualities,” in order to heighten the contrast 
between him and those who had wrung from him “ the 
sanction of his name to the most odious measures, and the 
most unjustifiable public doctrines.” Bute would probably 
have taken no notice of the attack, but Grenville was of a 
fiercer disposition; contradiction provoked, opposition infu¬ 
riated him. He caused Wilkes to be arrested under a 
general warrant directed against the authors, printers, and 
publishers of the “ North Briton,” and the secretary- of 
state, lord Egremont, before whom he was brought, com¬ 
mitted him to the Tower. As one of Wilkes’s objects was 
notoriety, his spirits and his insolence rose at his treatment. 

On arriving at his prison he represented to the warden of 
the Tower, that as he had a horror of cutaneous disorders, 
he hoped they would not put him where any Scotch¬ 
man had been imprisoned: if he might choose, he should 
like the cell where sir W. Wyndham (lord Egremont’s 
father) had been confined. His daughter was at school in 
Erance, the land of lettres de cachet and the Bastile. He 
wrote her a letter, and sent it open to lord Halifax, the 
other secretary, who found that its purport was to wish her 
joy of living in a free country. His martyrdom did not last 
long, as on suing out a habeas corpus, Pratt, the chief 
justice, discharged him on the ground that, as a member of 
parliament, he was not liable to be arrested for any offence 
which fell short of being a breach of the peace. The court 

t t 2 




HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


644 



a.d, comforted itself by removing lord Temple, who had gone to 
17*$* visit Wil,kes in the Tower, from the lord-lieutenancy of 
Buckinghamshire; Wilkes himself, in his turn, assumed the 
offensive, instigating his printers, whose shop had been 
entered under the warrant, to bring actions against the 
officers of the court, in which they obtained heavy damages. 
His personal popularity rose to an absurd height; feasts in 
his honour were given in the city, bonfires were kindled in 
the country, in which, as during the time of Bute’s admi¬ 
nistration, a petticoat and a jack-boot were usually com¬ 
mitted to the flames, the solemnity being in many places 
superintended by a figure in a plaid and a blue riband, lead¬ 
ing a donkey, crowned with a kingly crown, by the nose. 

The representatives of the people, however, were more 
under Grenville’s influence : they voted the obnoxious paper a 
scandalous and malicious libel, and expelled the author from 
the house of commons ; Mr. Martin, the secretary of the 
treasury, who had been practising at a target for nearly 
a year, provoked him to a duel, and wounded him severely. 
He retired to France, and not appearing to answer an 
indictment preferred against him for some of his writings, 
which were alleged to be indecent and profane, he was 
outlawed. 

Still, in spite of his triumph, Grenville was not quite at 
his ease, and began to propose measures for strengthening 
his administration; while the king, who found himself now 
even more unpopular than he had been while Bute was in 
office, began to think whether he should not best consult 
his comfort by dismissing him. While he was in doubt, 
lord Egremont died suddenly, and it became necessary 
to decide at once. Pitt was summoned to the palace, 
and for a day or two there seemed a prospect of a strong 
administration being formed under his auspices; but 
some of those to whom Pitt proposed to offer the chief 
posts in his cabinet were particularly unacceptable to the 
king, who conceived his honour concerned in maintaining 
his objection to them, and who at last decided on retaining 
Grenville, permitting him to conciliate additional support to 
his government by conferring offices on the duke of Bedford 
and some of his party ; but though they had some borough 
influence, they brought him no accession of parliamentary 
ability, in which, in the house of commons especially, 
they were so lamentably deficient, that lord Chesterfield 


LIX-] GEORGE Itl. 645 

% 

declared that they had not a man among them who had 
either abilities or words enough to call a coach. 

Still, for some time things went on quietly; till, on the 
5th of February, 1765, Grenville, who in the preceding 
year had imposed duties on several articles of American 
trade, proposed a long string of resolutions, asserting in 
general terms that “ it might be proper to charge certain 
stamp duties ” in America, such as were already payable in 
England. It was not a new plan. A quarter of a century 
before it had been suggested to Walpole, when perplexed 
to maintain his rapidly sinking authority; but that saga¬ 
cious statesman was not inclined to increase the number of 
his enemies b} r a scheme of such doubtful, and even if cer¬ 
tain, of such insignificant advantage. “ I have old England 
set against me already,” said he to his prompter; “ and do 
you think that I have a mind to have new England against 
me too?” Grenville had no such scruples; the fact of 
the parliament having the power to pass such resolutions 
was with him an argument quite conclusive. He did indeed 
call together the English agents of the different colonies, 
and told them that if they preferred any other duty to that 
which he had proposed, he should be happy to consult their 
wishes ; but in spite of grave remonstrances, which proceeded 
from some of the most far-sighted of the body, he would 
listen to no objection which threatened to interfere with his 
project of, in some way or other, aiding the English exche¬ 
quer bv a revenue to be derived from America. 

In England the measure attracted but little notice; but 
in America it produced at once the most violent excitement 
and the most determined resistance. Happily, before the 
news of the feelings thus awakened in America reached 
England, the ministry had irrevocably alienated the king, 
and had been forced to give way to wiser men. The king 
had been seized with a severe illness, and as the prince of 
Wales was an infant, the possibility of the recurrence of 
such an event with a fatal result suggested the necessity ot 
appointing a regency. The king desired to be invested 
with the power of naming the regent himself; but Gren¬ 
ville feared that, if unfettered, he would appoint the princess 
dowager, and that the consequence would be the revival of 
all Bute’s authority. He accordingly procured the insertion 
of a clause restricting the king’s choice to the royal family; 
and then, under pretence that the princess was so unpo- 


A.D. 

1764— 

1765. 






646 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. pular that there was reason to apprehend that the house of 

17G5. commons would except her by name (the bill bad been intro¬ 
duced in the house of lords), he induced the king to consent 
to a further proviso, naming as the only persons capable 
of being appointed, the queen, and those descendants of 
George II. usually resident in England. It was well known, 
however, that the king had been greatly grieved at the con¬ 
sent thus extorted from him; and the opposition, who, 
though they bore the princess and Bute no good will, hated 
Grenville far more, willingly supported her friends in the 
house of commons in a formal motion to add her name to 
the list, which was carried by a great majority. Tt was now 
plain to the king that the ministry was not as strong as he 
had fancied ; dangerous riots, too, had broken out among 
the Spitalfields weavers, in consequence of the rejection of 
a bill to raise'the duty on foreign silks; and the duke of 
Bedford, who had been pelted in the streets, and who had 
been forced to summon the aid of soldiers to protect his 
house, openly accused lord Bute to the king of being the 
chief instigator of the tumults. The king determined to 
get rid of a ministry who had friends among no class of the 
community, and applied to his uncle, the duke of Cumber¬ 
land, to aid him in treating with those statesmen whose aid 
this resolution rendered neeessarv. The duke had, on more 
than one occasion, vigorously opposed the measures of the 
former ministers ; but he was more offended still at the 
treatment which his nephew had received from Grenville, 
and willingly undertook the task imposed upon him. He 
first applied to Pitt; and Pitt’s warmest admirers are forced 
to admit that his conduct was wholly inexcusable. The 
entire interests of the state were offered to his guidance. 
He might have been minister himself; he might have made 
any one else minister. Unhappily, he suffered himself to be 
influenced by lord Temple, for whom he had, in reality, no 
great respect, but to whom he considered himself under 
great obligations, and who, having lately become reconciled 
to his brother Grenville, from whom he had long been 
estranged, thought, by preventing any arrangement at the 
moment, ultimately to reduce the king to an entire depend¬ 
ence on the united power of himself and his family. After 
much negotiation, Pitt refused all the duke’s offers. Again the 
king was forced to announce his intention to keep Grenville, 
and Grenville, always peremptory and uncourtly, now feeling 


GEORGE III. 


647 


LIX.] 

the more assured of the permanence of his power, from this 
second failure of an attempt to get rid of him, became more 
peremptory and uncourtly than ever. Again the king 
besought the aid of his uncle; and now, hopeless of any 
assistance from Pitt, the duke had recourse to the other 
heads of the Whig party, though death had lately deprived 
them of most of those members of their body who had any 
extensive official or parliamentary experience. 

The chief of them was the marquis of Rockingham, a 
nobleman in the prime of life, of unblemished character, 
and though not endowed with brilliant genius, eminently 
possessed of practical good sense, judgment, and discretion, 
and of that most invaluable quality in the head of a party, 
the art of preserving the confidence and attachment of his 
followers. His talents had hitherto been concealed from 
public notice by his delicate health, and by a sort of consti¬ 
tutional shyness, which prevented him from putting himself 
forward as a public speaker, but his merits had not escaped 
the notice of his friends; and when, on the death of lord 
Egremont, the king first applied to Mr. Pitt to undertake the 
government, he was surprised to find that Pitt proposed to 
place lord Rockingham at the head of the admiralty, and that 
he considered him one of the best men of business in the 
kingdom. He had now to learn that Pitt’s judgment was 
correct, and was widely shared by his whole party. The 
marquis was not eager for office ; but he accepted it in con¬ 
sideration of the manifest difficulty in which the king was 
placed. He became first lord of the treasury, the duke of 
Newcastle had the privy seal, the duke of Grafton and general 
Conway were the secretaries of state, and Mr. Dowdeswell 
was the chancellor of the exchequer; but the real mainstay 
of the ministry was the prime minister’s private secretary, 
who now entered parliament under his auspices, Edmund 
Burke, who supported all its measures with a richness of 
argumentative eloquence, with a variety of knowledge, an 
amplitude of theoretical wisdom, and an acuteness of practi¬ 
cal sagacity, all and each of them then, and ever since, un¬ 
equalled in a deliberative assembly. 

On the 8th of July the new ministry entered office, and 
before they could meet parliament, they lost a most im¬ 
portant support in the duke of Cumberland, who died sud- 
denlv at the beginning of the autumn. He had outlived 
the unpopularity of his earlier years, and was now so 


A.D. 

1765. 








A.n. 

1705 . 


648 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

sincerely regretted, that Walpole remarks that the middle 
and lower orders wore mourning for him longer than was 
enjoined by the Gazette. To lord Eockingham his loss 
was most serious, as the duke having negotiated his accept¬ 
ance of office, was by that fact pledged to support him, and 
his support was much more to be relied on than that of the 
king, who was known to have accepted his new ministers 
unwillingly, though no one yet suspected the course which 
he was about to allow his original prejudice against them 
to adopt. 

Although Bute no longer exerted any personal interference 
in state affairs, he had still many friends left in subordinate 
offices, who derived from him a knowledge, or at least a 
strong suspicion of the king’s inclination, and who now 
formed the centre of a faction contemptible for every thing 
but numbers, who gave themselves the name of “ the king’s 
friends,” and who, seeing the frequent changes of admi¬ 
nistration which of late had taken place, and foreseeing the 
probability of many more, hoped, under pretence of loyalty, 
to render their own tenure of office independent of all 
ministers. They had no personal intimacy with the king; 
they did not even wish for any. Their whole scheme was 
based on an idea which could only be realized by a shame¬ 
ful departure from the principles of the constitution, that 
the king would often wish to give an underhand opposition 
to measures proposed by his ministers, to which he had been 
forced to give a formal consent, and that he might find, or 
expect to find, his advantage in their defeat. They had 
discerned, or they had been taught, that he had a high 
notion of his own prerogative, and that he was not at all 
inclined to acquiesce in the constitutional view of his posi¬ 
tion, according to which the measures for which his 
ministers were responsible were entitled to his support as 
long as they remained his ministers. Those ministers he 
had the right of choosing, though the power of the house of 
commons over the supplies in effect gave them a veto on their 
appointment, which made the exercise of his choice depend 
on the parliament for its ratification. He could not, there¬ 
fore, be at variance with his ministers while they were 
supported by parliament, without also being at variance 
with the parliament; and yet the object of these men was 
to render and to keep him at variance with them. 

It is impossible to avoid blaming the king himself very 


GEOUGE III. 


649 


LIX.] 

severely for consenting to be led into such an unconsti- a.d. 
tutional and faithless line of conduct; but his education 
had been grossly neglected by his mother, and by those 
whom she placed about him. He had not yet emancipated 
his mind from the practical lessons of evil he had learnt 
from her and her favourite ; and the first few years of his 
reign present a striking contrast to those of his riper age, 
when he earned the affectionate respect of the whole nation 
by his straightforward honesty and sincerity, and also by the 
admirable example set by himself and by his consort of 
discountenancing vice and irreligion, and rendering the 
royal palace a model for every home in the kingdom. But 
at the period of which we are speaking, he not only treated 
his ministers with insincerity, but gave ample grounds for 
the complaint that, though not in the least inclined to vice 
or profligacy himself, the most open practice of every kind 
of irregularity was no bar to his favour. 

It is from the accession of lord Rockingham’s first 
ministry to office that we may date the comparative purity 
of English politics. Till that time no government for many 
years had attempted to stand except by the corruption of 
its supporters. Even Pitt connived at the bribery openly 
practised by his colleagues; and, not content with bribing 
others, many ministers had been shamefully corrupt them¬ 
selves. Not to go back to the old days of Craggs and 
Aislabie. even Grenville had obtained grants and reversions 
of which he was so much ashamed, that he actually pro¬ 
cured them to be made out under another name, and had 
made his own cook serve him five years for an office in the 
treasury; while lord Halifax had openly sold the employ¬ 
ments in his gift, and had shared the price with his mis¬ 
tress ; but now no member was made richer by his support 
of the cabinet; no minister sought illegal gains for himself: 
they came into office, I may almost say reluctantly, with 
the sole object of serving their country, and they permitted 
no selfish views to interfere with that object. 

Erom the first, however, they were surrounded with 
difficulties, many of them owing to the capricious and 
factious conduct of Pitt, which his panegyrists excuse by 
alleging, probably with some truth, that ill health had at 
this time so undermined his .constitution, that he w r as 
already feeling the approach of that nervous malady which 
a year or two afterwards for a while wholly disabled him 










650 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. from attending to business. No one was more clearly 

17 GG. bound to afford lord Rockingham a frank and cordial sup¬ 
port than he. Lord Rockingham agreed with him in nearly 
every point of politics; had sedulously attended to his 
supposed wishes by appointing some of his friends to office, 
and by offering posts to others; and had only become the 
minister in consequence of his refusal; yet Pitt’s attitude 
towards him was from the very first distrustful and hostile. 
He dissuaded those of his friends who consulted him from 
joining the ministry; and on the very first day that he ap¬ 
peared in parliament he proclaimed, with ostentatious meta¬ 
phor, that they had no share in his confidence ; but on the 
only subject on which he could contrive to differ from them, 
his warmest advocates are compelled to pronounce him 
entirely wrong, both in point of constitutional law, and of 
common sense. 

Before the parliament met, news arrived of the angry 
feelings which Grenville’s stamp act had excited in 
America; but even before the receipt of this intelligence 
the ministry had determined to repeal the act. The king 
was exceedingly averse to such a measure; and, though 
the ministers had no suspicion of such a step, actually 
began a negotiation with Grenville and the duke of Bedford 
to return to office, while at the verv same time he was 
writing notes to lord Rockingham, condemning the factious 
opposition which Grenville was offering him. The houses 
had met before Christmas, 1765 ; but the first great debate 
took place in January. Grenville wished the commons to 
brand the colonies as rebellious, and the whole force of the 
opposition attacked the ministers for pusillanimity in being 
afraid to give their conduct its right name. Pitt had 
prescribed to himself a difficult and discreditable part. He 
could not oppose the ministers, and he would not support 
them. He tried to sneer them down as unworthv of his 
confidence (forgetting how lately he had spoken to the king 
in the highest terms of the capacity of their chief), and 
then proceeded to deny that the parliament had the power 
to tax America, because America was not represented. 
Nothing but the grossest ignorance of constitutional law 
could have induced him to promulgate so absurd a doc¬ 
trine ; but Pitt often made it a boast that he did not draw 
his principles from books; in fact, his information on every 
subject was extremely limited. His own sister declared 


GEORGE Til. 


651 


LIX.] 

that he knew nothing well hut the Fairy Queen; and a.i? 
George II. had often complained of being forced to submit !7<»6. 
to the dictation of a minister who had never read Yattel. 

It is quite evident that in strictness of law the parlia-. 
ment was supreme, and that its authority to make laws of 
every description necessarily included a power of taxation. 

The ministers never doubted the power, but they denied 
the wisdom of exercising it in a manner for which there 
was no precedent. With as little delay as possible Conway 
brought in a bill to repeal the stamp act, accompanied by 
a declaration of the full right and power of Great Britain 
to bind America in all cases whatever. He enforced his 
proposal by a consideration, not merely of the disturbances 
which the act had caused in America, but of the injury 
which those disturbances had inflicted on our domestic 
trade, and prophesied, with a foresight which subsequent 
events proved only too accurate, that if we persevered in 
maintaining the tax, and the Americans in resisting it, 
France and Spain would surely take part with America. 

Lord Buckingham has been blamed for insisting on the 
assertion of the power of parliament to impose such a tax, 
while repealing the tax itself; but the maintenance of the 
theoretical power was indispensable, in order to obtain 
the king’s assent to the repeal. The colonists themselves 
did not in general object to the assertion of the right; nor 
was any ill feeling produced by it. They felt that their 
happiness depended not on the statement or denial of an 
abstract principle, but on the enforcement or non-enforce¬ 
ment of a real grievance. They looked on the repeal of 
the act as a practical proof that England was wiser than 
she had been, was content to adhere to precedents, and 
to the system under which they and their ancestors had 
flourished, and the real patriots on each side of the Atlantic 
were too sensible to wish to prolong discussions on the 
compatibility of the freedom of the colonies with the 
supremacy of the mother country, which if carried too far 
might prove dangerous to both. 

In the first division which took place the majority in 
favour of the repeal was so great that the success of the 
bill was assured in the house of commons. The lobbies and 
all the approaches to the house were crowded with A merican 
merchants, eager to obtain the earliest information of their 
fate, who now, by the tumultuous joy which they testified, 








652 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

• 

a.d. plainly showed how far they were from desiring to separate 

1766. their interests from those of England. As the leading 
members who had supported their cause came out, they 
expressed their joy in vociferous cheers. Conway was 
greeted with huzzas, and thanks, and blessings; but when 
Pitt appeared, the whole crowd rent the air with accla¬ 
mations, with which many of them escorted him to his 
own door. The bill had equal success in the upper house 
in spite of the king’s friends, who w:ere expressly-told by 
his majesty that they might vote against it without losing 
their places. On the 18th of March it received the royal 
assent, and was hailed in America with an unanimous burst 
of thankfulness and exultation. 

Still, in spite of his success, lord [Rockingham felt that 
he held his power by a precarious tenure, and sought to 
strengthen his position by obtaining the accession of Pitt. 
Almost immediately after the opening of parliament he 
had made formal overtures to him to accept office with the 
lead in the ministry, and he now repeated them, but in vain. 
Pitt kept haughtily aloof, refusing all their offers, but 
giving no reason, except his objection to serve with the 
duke of Newcastle, with whom not many years before he 
had entered into a close and willing coalition. 

An union with Pitt would have established the ministry 
in the confidence of the nation ; but if they had known 
the truth, they would have been aware that the enemy to 
be gained over was not the people, but the king, who looked 
upon the repeal of the stamp act as an abandonment of his 
prerogative, and bore the deepest resentment against those 
who had insisted on it, which at the same time he disguised 
by studiously civil and friendly language, writing to lord 
[Rockingham, that “ a steady perseverance, unattended by 
heat, would overcome all opposition, even in parliament 
and at the same time encouraging his “ friends ” to oppose 
the ministry on all occasions, and refusing to let them be 
turned out in spite of lord Bockingham’s earnest, and at 
times indignant remonstrances. In spite of all their diffi¬ 
culties the ministry went on steadily in the path of useful¬ 
ness which they had chalked out for themselves. They 
repealed the excise duty on cider; they carried a resolution 
declaring the illegality of general warrants. At the same 
time they conducted the foreign affairs of the kingdom with 
skill and success; they induced Prance to complete the 


GEORGE III. 


653 


L1X.] 

engagements into which she had entered at the late peace, 
and they made an advantageous commercial treaty with 
Russia; but the ill will of the king towards them became 
every day more undisguised. Pitt, wdio had apparently 
been already in secret communication with the court, again, 
began to be eager for office, and would not submit to what 
he fancied the condescension of joining an existing ministry. 
He determined to overthrow them if possible; and on their 
proposing a trifling reduction in the militia, he made a 
furious speech, declaring that he would go to the furthest 
corner of the island to overturn any ministry who were 
enemies to the militia. He had also had secret conferences 
with the chancellor, lord Northington, whom lord Rocking¬ 
ham had, rather unwisely, retained in office, with the view 
of conciliating the king, who was known to regard him 
with especial favour. He had been caballing against them 
during the whole period of their official existence, and now 
he was anxious to undermine them, provided he could 
secure for himself a less laborious place in the next govern¬ 
ment ; and this Pitt was willing to promise him, though 
there was not one single point of politics on which the 
two were agreed. For instance, on the stamp act, Pitt 
had been for the repeal, and against the assertion of the 
right to tax, while Northington had done his best to defeat 
the repeal, and in support of the assertion of the right to 
tax, had made so intemperate a speech as greatly to disgust 
some Americans who were present, and to alarm all moderate 
people. 

The state of affairs w r as too notorious to escape the eyes 
even of foreigners. The Russian ambassador wrote to his 
' court not to commit themselves with the present government, 
as they had not the king’s confidence, and could not stand. 
The letter fell into lord Rockingham’s hands, who showed it 
to the king. The king assured him that he had his entire 
confidence, and caressed him and Dowdeswell at court to 
such a degree as greatly to alarm lord Temple, who was 
looking forward to succeeding him. At last the chancellor 
found an opportunity of delivering a fatal blow. Grenville’s 
government had, very unwisely, established the English laws 
in full force in Canada, a measure which had naturally pro¬ 
duced great confusion among a people whose language and 
habits were wholly different from those of the English; and 
lord Northington, who was ill with the gout, pretending 


A.D. 

17 (> 6 . 






A.D. 

17 Cfi. 


654 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [oil. 

to fancy that he had been insulted by the cabinet 011 one 
occasion meeting to deliberate on the subject in his absence, 
rose from his sick bed, and hastening to the king’s presence, 
resigned the seals into his hand. The king, without making 
the slightest communication to the rest of the government, 
wrote with his own hand a letter to Mr. Pitt; and thus the 
ministry were unceremoniously and discourteously dismissed, 
a year all but one day after they had entered upon office. 


CHAPTER LX. 

* 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

It was not to be expected that Pitt would find it very easy 
to construct his intended government. A short time before 
he had described himself as having but four friends in one 
house, and five in the other; and his task was rendered 
more difficult by a quarrel which he had with lord Temple, 
who had expected to be the first lord of the treasury. Lord 
Rockingham, too magnanimous to show any resentment at 
the unworthy treatment he had experienced, persuaded Con¬ 
way and others of his friends to remain in office; and at last 
a ministry was formed, composed of men of the most dis¬ 
cordant parties and incompatible opinions. Some years 
afterwards, Burke described it as “ an administration so 
chequered and speckled, a piece of joinery so crossly indented 
and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such 
a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement 
without cement, here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of 
white, patriots and courtiers, king’s friends and republicans, 
"Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies, that 
it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch 
and unsure to stand upon.” Pitt took the privy seal him¬ 
self with the title of earl of Chatham, the duke of Grafton 
had the treasury, Mr. Charles Townsend, a man of great 
abilities, but of fickle and rash disposition, was made chan¬ 
cellor of the exchequer, Conway continued secretary of state 
with lord Shelburne for his colleague, a man of considerable 
abilities, but with a character for insincerity which grew day 
by day more confirmed, till it procured him the nickname of 
Malagrida, from a noted Spanish jesuit. Lord Camden became 
lord chancellor, lord Northington president of the council, 



LX -] GEORGE III. 655 

while the paymaster’s place was given to lord North, who 
soon rose to a more conspicuous situation. 

It was soon apparent, however, that the new ministry 
would not enjoy all the popularity on which it had reckoned, 
and this want of* favour was owing to a most unreasonable 
outcry against Pitt’s acceptance of a peerage: that, as 
regards the strength of the ministry, it was an impolitic step 
may be granted, and as such his colleagues viewed it, feeling 
that it was in the commons that his fame had been made, 
and that it was in that assembly that his eloquence would 
have been of the greatest service to them ; but as regards 
himself, he had certainly fairly earned his honours; and 
though he was not an old man, his constitution was now so 
much impaired, that the retirement to the more quiet atmos¬ 
phere of the house of lords was indispensable to the preser¬ 
vation of his health, perhaps of his life. Yet the discontent 
at his elevation was universal. The city had been preparing 
to celebrate his return to power by a general illumination, 
but the moment that his acceptance of a peerage was 
known, all idea of such a display was laid aside, and it is 
probable that the annoyance felt by the new peer at the 
dissatisfaction thus expressed at his elevation, may have 
had no slight share in producing in him that nervous and 
irritable state of mind which was soon visible in all his 
actions. 

His first administration had been glorious beyond all pre¬ 
cedent, his second was full of disgrace and disaster. He 
began by announcing that the principles of his ministry 
were the same as those of lord Rockingham’s, though why, 
if such were the case, he had behaved with such hostility to 
lord Rockingham he forbore to explain. He then proceeded 
to disgust his colleagues and supporters by treating them 
with the most extraordinary haughtiness ; so that on one 
occasion even Conway, a man of singularly equable temper, 
was provoked into declaring that such language as his had 
never been heard west of Constantinople; and at the same 
time he showed that Re was not by any means fit to manage 
the existing affairs of the kingdom without their assistance. 
His first administration was a time of war; and in war, the 
originality and boldness of his designs, and the dauntless 
resolution with which he pressed them forward, qualified 
him to shine as he had then done; but the present was a 
time of peace, and it was soon plain that to such a state of 
things his talents were far less suited. He resumed his 


A.D. 

17 Ofi. 







656 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. plan of a great northern confederacy against the house of 

17G7. Bourbon, but he mismanaged his diplomatic arrangements 
so as to lose the alliance of Austria, and to offend Russia, 
without conciliating Prussia; while at home he excited con¬ 
siderable opposition by his conduct with respect to the corn 
trade. The harvest had been scanty over the whole of 
Europe, and as the price of corn was higher on the Conti¬ 
nent than in England, it was believed that the merchants 
were preparing to export large quantities of grain ; serious 
apprehensions of scarcity were entertained, which in some 
counties gave rise to formidable riots. Lord Chatham at 
once issued an order in council laying an embargo on corn; 
a measure which was, perhaps, justifiable under the circum¬ 
stances, though wholly unprecedented in a time of peace ; 
but one which certainly required the instant sanction of 
parliament. At the same time he refused to anticipate the 
meeting of parliament; and when the houses did meet, he 
maintained that the order in council was no illegal exten¬ 
sion of the prerogative, and was seconded by the lord pre¬ 
sident and the lord chancellor in intemperate and indiscreet 
speeches. The law, however, was so plainly laid down by 
the chief justice, lord Mansfield, that the assertion could 
not be maintained, and the ministers, though unwillingly, 
were forced to confess that the measure had been illegal, 
and to consent to a bill of indemnity, which the opposition 
were quite willing to grant. He next began to consider 
the affairs of the East India Company, whose existing 
charter was near its end, and with whom he was desirous to 
make a bargain more advantageous to the public than had 
hitherto been made, even if he did not decide on claiming 
for the crown a great portion of their recent territorial 
conquests. But he refused to give his colleagues the 
slightest intimation of his views, and before he could 
mature them, he was taken ill, and retired into the 
country, becoming quite incapable of attending to any kind 
of business ; though it was some time before he resigned his 
office. 

His illness brought out all the evils of the singular system, 
or rather want of system, on which he had composed his 
ministry. His colleagues, some of them personally strangers 
to each other, and some even notoriously at variance with each 
other in their political sentiments, could only be kept in any 
kind of harmony by his controlling hand, and by the confidence 
they all felt in his genius. Some resigned, more talked of 


GEORGE III. 


657 


EX.] 

resigning ; and even those who as yet remained had hut little 
hope of being long able to carry on the government; lord 
Northington openly saying that there were four parties in 
the parliament, and that that of the ministers was the weak¬ 
est of the four. 

The knowledge of their weakness and disunion gave 
strength and encouragement to the opposition ; and, on a 
division on the amount of the land-tax to be voted, the 
ministers were beaten by a majority of nearly 100, it being 
the first defeat on a money bill that any government had 
received since the revolution; and Townsend’s desire to 
make up for the loss of revenue, on which he had calculated 
from this source, led him to disregard not only the warning 
that the history of the stamp act afforded, but the avowed 
principles of nearly all his colleagues who had joined in the 
repeal of that measure, and he brought in a bill to lay a tax 
on tea, glass, and other articles, to be paid as import duties 
in America. The insignificance of the impost enabled him 
to carry his proposal, in spite of a vigorous opposition by 
the late government, led by Burke, who warned him in pro¬ 
phetic language that what would be considered in America 
was not the amount of the tax, but the principle on which 
it was exacted. 

The moment that the parliament w'as prorogued the duke 
of Grafton resigned the treasury, which was offered to lord 
[Rockingham, but, unhappily for the nation, the negotiations 
for the formation of a new ministry failed, partly owing to 
the intrigues of lord [Rockingham’s secret enemies or rivals, 
and partly owing to the insincerity of the king, who ulti¬ 
mately retained the duke of Grafton as his prime minister, 
and subsequently owned (if we may trust Walpole) that he 
had never really intended to part with him. 

The new taxes excited strong feelings of resentment and 
resistance in America. At Boston, where the commissioners 
appointed to collect them landed, serious riots took place, 
which were aggravated by the imprudence of the governor 
of Massachusetts, Mr. Bernard. The duke of Grafton 
became alarmed, and proposed to repeal Townsend’s bill, 
but was overruled in the cabinet. Townsend himself had 
died suddenly in the autumn, and had been succeeded at 
the exchequer by lord North; Conway had retired, by 
which the moderate party in the cabinet lost one vote; and 
a third secretary of state was now added, for the affairs of 

u u 


A. D. 

17<)7— 
17 Gif. 






A.D. 

1768 - 

1770. 


658 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

the colonies ; the earl of Hillsborough, by a not very fortunate 
discrimination, being selected for that office. 

In the winter the parliament was dissolved, and, as if the 
discontent which they had excited in the colonies was not 
by itself sufficiently embarrassing, the ministers proceeded 
to involve themselves in a quarrel with all the constituencies 
in England by a flagrant violation of the rights of one of 
those bodies. Wilkes had lately returned to the country, 
and, at the general election, had been elected member for 
Middlesex, and had been made an alderman of the city of 
London, though almost immediately after his election he 
was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on account of the 
prosecution formerly instituted against him ; and again the 
government procured his expulsion from the house of com¬ 
mons. He was unanimously re-elected, a step which there 
was no law to prevent, but which provoked the ministers to 
propose a resolution that, having been expelled, he was 
incapable of being re-elected to the same parliament. It 
was to no purpose that Burke and his party pointed out 
that to attempt to act upon such a resolution was to make 
a vote of one house of parliament equal to a law. The reso¬ 
lution was carried by a triumphant majority ; but Wilkes 
was equally victorious on the hustings, and was again re¬ 
turned by an enormous majority over colonel Luttrell, whom 
the government had persuaded to stand, and whom they 
now induced the house to declare duly elected. The whole 
kingdom was roused by this unexampled interference with 
the right of election ; petitions poured in from every part of 
the kingdom begging the king to dissolve the parliament; 
while the general feeling w r as further shown by the result of 
an action which Wilkes brought against the secretary of 
state for seizing his papers under the general warrant ori¬ 
ginally issued against him, when the jury gave him the 
enormous damages of 4000/. 

This error provoked the opposition to repeated attacks 
upon the ministers, which were led by Burke, who, in the 
harangues with which he thundered against them and their 
successors, made party warfare serve a purpose beyond the 
present time by the large principles of universal justice and 
wisdom on which he rested his cause, illustrating them by 
the most brilliant imagery,‘the most varied learning, and 
the closest argument that was ever employed to convince an 
unwilling audience. He did almost greater service with his 


GEOilGE III. 


659 


pen, appealing to the public out of doors by a succession of 
pamphlets, adorned by the same characteristics in such pro¬ 
lusion, that they have furnished, as it were, an armoury from 
which succeeding political writers have constantly drawn 
the most effective of their weapons. It was an age of 
pamphlets, and one set of political writings, the Letters of 
Junius, excited an interest above all others of the same 
class, not so much from the ability displayed in them, 
though they exhibited great vigour of expression, and a 
considerable mastery over the language, as from their un¬ 
paralleled rancour and utter unscrupulousness, and still 
more from the mystery which was observed respecting their 
authorship, and which was such that the very publisher is 
believed to have been ignorant of the name of the writer, 
though they have now for many years been known to be the 
work of Mr., afterwards sir Philip Francis 6 . 

At the beginning of the year 1770 lord Chatham, having 
entirely recovered from his maladies, resumed his attendance 
in parliament, uniting, as he ought to have done long before, 
with lord Rockingham and his party. The duke of Grafton, 
who had had great difficulty in maintaining his position 
before, was quite unable to face his enemies when reinforced 
in such a manner, and, being weary of the labours of office, 
and disgusted with many of his colleagues, gladly retired 
from the treasury, and was succeeded by lord North, who, 
though unwilling to place himself in so prominent a position, 
yielded his scruples to the personal request of the king, who 
pressed it with extraordinary earnestness as the only alter¬ 
native which could save him from the necessity of applying 
to lord Chatham and lord Rockingham, against whom his 
prejudices had been greatly increased by their opposition to 
the measures adopted against Wilkes, in whose disgrace his 
majesty constantly evinced a strong personal interest. 

6 It is from no love of paradox that the writer asserts his opinion that the 
Letters of Junius are more overrated than almost any work in the language; 
and that they owe their chief reputation to the last of the causes mentioned 
above. No doubt they are at times written with power; but, on the other hand, 
many of the most quoted passages are very feeble. To take one instance, 
there has probably been no sentence of them oftener quoted as a specimen of 
severe sarcasm than that about Wedderburne: ‘•There is something about 
him which even treachery cannot trust.” Even lord Campbell mentions it as 
a most stinging epigram. A very little reflection would have shown him that 
it is mere nonsense. The very last qualification which one would ascribe to 
treachery is a proneness to trust others. Honesty is unsuspicious, but treachery 
dares confide in no one. 


A.D. 

1769— 

1770. 


u u 2 





660 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Nor could George III. have found any minister better 
*770— suited to his own purpose of resisting the claims of America, 
and of keeping out the statesmen who had become obnoxious 
to him; for lord North had skill as a financier, fertility of 
resource, patience, eloquence, and especial readiness as a 
debater; firmness, in the best sense of the word, he had not, 
for he permitted his exaggerated feelings of loyalty to lead 
him to advocate and to conduct measures of which he dis¬ 
approved ; but, when his line of conduct, however erroneous, 
was taken, he showed the greatest resolution and address in 
adhering to it. He had wit that never deserted him, and 
that enabled him often to turn the laugh against his oppo¬ 
nents ; and a good humour, proof at all times against the 
ridicule, the scorn, and the fierce invective with which he 
was for years assailed by an opposition led by some of the 
mightiest chiefs of parliamentary oratory. 

The change of ministers did not appease the opposition. 
It was soon apparent that no change of measures was con¬ 
templated. The new premier did indeed propose to repeal 
all the American taxes imposed by Townsend, except that 
on tea. Burke, as the leader of his party, insisted on in¬ 
cluding the duty on tea, but the ministers carried their 
proposal. For a while the partial relief thus granted bad 
its effect, in producing hesitation on the part of many of 
the more moderate Americans to agitate the countrv for an 
impost so trifling as that which remained, and which was 
productive of no practical hardship, since, the English export 
duty having been removed, tea was actually cheaper than it 
had been before; but when, in 1773, an act was passed, 
allowing the East India Company a drawback on the tea 
imported to America, it armed with a stronger weapon 
those more far-sighted patriots who had objected to the prin¬ 
ciple asserted in the preamble of the act which granted the 
tax, and kindled the flame of resistance till it spread from 
one end of America to the other. 

For a year or two affairs in England went on so quietly 
as to afford no subject for a historian, except the passing of 
the royal marriage act. The king had been greatly offended 
at two of his brothers, the duke of Gloucester and the duke 
of Cumberland, having married subjects, lady Waldegrave, 
a granddaughter of the first lord Orford, and Mrs. Horton, 
a sister of colonel Luttrell; and, to prevent the recurrence 
of such misalliances, the ministers introduced a bill to pro- 


GEORGE III. 


661 


LX.] 

Mbit any descendant of George II. from marrying without 
the king’s consent under the age of twenty-five. The king’s 
dislike of lord Rockingham was not diminished by the 
vigorous opposition which his party in both houses gave to 
the proposed bill, which was very unpopular with the nation ; 
but it was carried, and produced a slight division in the 
ministry, as Charles James Fox, in subsequent years the 
celebrated leader of the Whig party, who, though a very 
young man, had already been made a lord of the admiralty, 
resigned his office in order to vote against it, thus laying 
the foundation of the dislike which the king ever afterwards 
entertained to him; for George III. had given public notice 
that he looked on the bill as a matter in which he was per¬ 
sonally interested, adding the very unconstitutional threat 
that he would remember those who opposed it. After the 
passing of the bill Fox rejoined the ministry, but was soon 
dismissed by lord North at the king’s suggestion; and his 
dismissal was fortunate for his subsequent career and repu¬ 
tation, as it left him at liberty, when the news of the dis¬ 
turbances at Boston arrived, to unite with lord Rockingham’s 
party in their opposition to the penal measures introduced 
by his late colleagues. 

The marquis de Montcalm had prophesied that if England 
succeeded in conquering Canada, that acquisition would be 
more than counterbalanced by the extent to which it would 
weaken the dependence on her of her own American colo¬ 
nies, and the ministers were now hastening to realize their 
enemy’s prophecy. The Americans had other causes of dis¬ 
content with the home government, arising chiefly from the 
indifferent character of many of the officers sent out from 
England, and from the neglect with which their representa¬ 
tions were generally treated; but all were now merged in 
the one great grievance of taxation. At first the opposition 
broke out in fierce riots, but it was soon more regularly 
organized bv formally appointed committees; and, though as 
yet the bulk of the population was loyal to the crown, a 
democratic party was already forming eager to trample the 
old prejudices and old institutions under foot, and to 
render America independent; and the course of events added 
to their side the most influential Americans in England. 
Dr. Franklin, a native of Boston, and a man of great emi¬ 
nence in the scientific world, was at this time residing in 
London as the agent for Massachusetts. He had taken 


A.D. 

1770- 

1773. 







662 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. a decided part in the agitation against the imposition of 

*774. taxes on America, without as yet relaxing his feelings of 
loyal attachment to the mother country, or entertaining any 
views beyond those of procuring the re-establishment of the 
former principles of government. But in the year 1773 he 
obtained possession, in some mysterious manner, of some 
letters written by the governor and lieutenant-governor of 
his native province, in which they advocated the employment 
of severe measures of coercion against the colony. He sent 
them to America, where they were published by the assembly 
of Massachusetts, which founded on them a petition to the 
king to recal the writers. When the petition came before 
the privy council, Wedderburne, the solicitor-general, in¬ 
veighed with the greatest bitterness against Franklin for 
his violation of the sacredness of private correspondence. 
Franklin refused to explain how r he had become possessed of 
the letters, and pretended to regard the reproaches levelled 
at him, and the exultation with which they were received by 
the audience, with contempt; but in reality they kindled in 
his breast a hatred of England, from which he never swerved, 
and a determination to do all in his power to separate his 
country from her dominion. 

The petition had hardly been rejected when news arrived 
of fresh riots in Boston; on the arrival of some vessels laden 
with the tea which was to be subject to the duty a mob 
disguised as native Indians had boarded the vessels, thrown 
the tea into the sea, and defied all attempts to discover the 
leaders in this outrage upon the laws. The indignation 
which the news excited in the breasts of the ministers was 
equal to that of the Americans at the tax; and in March, 
1774, lord North brought forward a bill to deprive Boston 
for a time of all its privileges as a port, till the citizens 
should make compensation to the East India Company for 
the tea which had been destroyed, and till they should re¬ 
established order and tranquillity in their city; another 
bill authorized the governor to send any persons to England 
for trial who might be accused of having borne a part in the 
disturbances; while a third established a new r system of 
government in Massachusetts. All these bills were vigor¬ 
ously opposed, by some persons on narrow grounds, or 
because of objection to some of their details ; but by Burke 
on the wiser principle that the only measures which could 
be effectual to regain the affection of the colonies must be 


GEORGE III. 


663 


LX.] 

those of conciliation rather than of coercion. Others of the 
colonies soon slmwed their sympathy with Massachusetts; 
the bill for disfranchising Boston was received in America 
with general indignation; it was printed with a black border, 
and in many other towns the 1st of June, on which it was 
to come into operation, was observed as a day of public 
mourning. 

The opposition to the English government was rapidly 
assuming a dangerous degree of organization ; corresponding 
committees were formed in several provinces, and in Septem¬ 
ber a general congress met a Philadelphia, to deliberate on 
the line of conduct to be pursued. In imitation of the 
English parliament of 1688, the members drew up a decla¬ 
ration of rights; and then, pronouncing that these rights 
had been violated by the imposition of taxes by the English 
parliament, they came to a resolution to cease to import 
English goods after September, 1775, unless, in the mean 
time, the laws of which they complained should be repealed 
by the English parliament. 

The news of these measures alarmed those far-sighted 
statesmen who led the opposition, and none more than 
Burke. In the year 1774 he had supported a motion of 
Mr. Bose Fuller for the repeal of the obnoxious duty, and 
this year lord Chatham introduced in the house of lords a 
bill which he had prepared after careful consultation with 
Franklin, repealing all the recent acts of parliament relating 
to America, and seeking to engage the Americans of their 
own accord to grant an annual sum in aid of the English 
revenue; and, a week or two afterwards, Burke, in the lower 
house, moved a series of resolutions of nearly the same 
purport. For some time these two great men acted in strict 
harmony in this cause; no eloquence could surpass the fiery 
declamation with which Chatham upheld the cause of con¬ 
stitutional freedom in America, and thundered against the 
ministers who were thus driving an entire nation into rebel¬ 
lion ; nor have uninspired lips ever poured forth lessons of 
more profound and magnanimous wisdom than those with 
which Burke urged the claims of justice and humanity, and 
sought to restore the blessings of peace to the parent and 
child thus unhappily disunited. But their efforts were in 
vain; the ministers, who opposed both Chatham’s bill and 
Burk’e’s resolutions, defeated them by a large majority in 
both houses; and a resolution carried by lord North so 


A.D. 

1774— 
1775 . 






664 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.ti. clearly made all conciliatory measures in England depend 

1775. on |q ie previous submission of the Americans, as rather to 
add fuel to the flame than to quench it. 

It is possible that lord North would have consented to 
more moderate measures, but he was overruled by the king 
himself, whose personal feelings were embarked in what he 
fancied the proper maintenance of his legal prerogative, and 
who, in his private letters to his minister, insisted on con¬ 
tinuing one tax to keep up the right, and expressed a 
decided opinion that on the display of a proper firmness by 
the government, the Americans would submit. 

He was fated to be rudely undeceived. In April an armed 
force collected at Lexington, fired on a detachment sent by 
general Gage to destroy some military stores collected at a 
place called Concord ; the next month a body of volunteers 
surprised a British post at Ticonderoga; and a week or two 
afterwards the congress formally threw down the gauntlet 
to Great Britain, assuming for the provinces which had sent 
members to their assemblv the title of the united colonies, 
passing an unanimous vote that they should be put in a 
state of defence, issuing paper money on the credit of the 
congress, levying large bodies of men, and appointing 
colonel George Washington commander-in-chief of the 
troops then employed in the neighbourhood of Boston, and 
of all other armies hereafter to be raised in North America. 
Their choice does no small honour to their discernment and 
moderation, and contributed in no small degree to their 
success in the coming struggle. 

Washington was now forty-three years of age, and pos¬ 
sessed of the rarest virtues w T hich have ever won an immor¬ 
tality of glory; yet he was not possessed of any very 
remarkable capacity for war, nor in a more mature age 
did he display any very eminent statesmanlike or legislative 
genius; but he was endowed with unswerving practical 
common sense, with a force of character which, at the very 
commencement of these struggles, pointed him out to hi's 
fellows as the fittest man to command and control them, 
and with a magnanimity and moral greatness which pre¬ 
served him in his stedfastness of purpose undismayed by 
difficulty and disaster, and, what is rarer still, unaltered by 
success, and uncorrupted by the gratitude of his country¬ 
men and by the admiring homage of the world at large; 
which can boast indeed of more eloquent orators, of more 


GEORGE III. 


665 


LXI.] 

invincible warriors, of more profound statesmen, but of no t 
• more disinterested patriot, of no citizen of so well-regulated 1 ' 
an ambition, of such equal and unshaken virtue, as the 
founder and first governor of the republic of America. 


CHAPTER LXI. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

That most terrible of contests, civil war, was again, after an 
interval of 130 years, to convulse the kingdom ; for, though 
waged on a continent far removed from the shores of 
Britain, the struggle with America was to all intents and 
purposes a civil war. Not only did numbers of the Ameri¬ 
cans still possess property and near kinsmen in Britain, but 
many of the officers afterwards most distinguished in the 
service were themselves natives of that country, and held 
commissions in the British army at this time, when the 
very same violation of the principles of the constitution 
which had cost Charles his life, namely, the imposition of 
taxes which had not been granted by the representatives of 
those who were taxed, was about to cost George III. the 
fairest portion of his colonial dominions. Nor, though the 
error is chiefly to be attributed to the rashness of the 
ministers and to the pertinacity of the sovereign, was the 
nation at large free from blame, since it is certain that the 
original imposition of taxes on America was in accordance 
with the general feeling; and that, when the news of her 
resistance arrived, the measures of coercion and punishment 
which were proposed by the ministers were approved of by 
a large majority of every class of Englishmen. 

It is very remarkable, considering the military renown of 
the nation, and the unsurpassed genius which so many of 
our commanders have displayed when called upon to en¬ 
counter a foreign enemy, that neither of the civil wars which 
stain the modern history of England (in the time of the 
Roses war had hardly become a science) was signalized by 
anv great achievements of military skill; and that, in this 
respect, the war of which we are speaking was even inferior 
to that which was carried on in our own island. 

In June, 1775, general Gage, the British commander-in¬ 
chief, occupied Boston with about 10,000 men. Even 
before the appointment of Washington he was blockaded by 





666 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. an American force of nearly double that number; and a 

177^. height commanding a portion of the town, and known as • 
Bunker’s Hill, was the scene of the first regular battle 
between the two armies. The Americans had thrown up 
some intrenchments on the more advanced of two ridges 
into which the hill was divided; and, on the afternoon of 
the 17th of June, Gage sent general TIowe with 2000 men 
to dislodge them. Some of the circumstances gave a sad 
omen of the blunders which were fated to distinguish the 
whole conduct of the war. Not only were the troops, 
though only marching out of the town to which they were 
to return at night, encumbered with their knapsacks, and 
with the additional load of three days’ provisions ; but the 
field-pieces with which they were furnished, when the 
moment for using them arrived, were found to be provided 
only with cannon-balls of too large a calibre, so that they 
were entirely useless. In spite of all their difficulties the 
troops gallantly ascended the hill. The Americans fought 
bravely, and received them with a most destructive fire; but 
at last they were driven from their stronghold at the point 
of the bayonet, though, from having been sheltered behind 
their fortifications, the loss which they had inflicted on their 
assailants nearly doubled that which they themselves sus¬ 
tained. 

But, though thus resolute in their resistance, the Ameri¬ 
cans had not yet given up hope of reconciliation wdth 
England. The very next month the congress signed a peti¬ 
tion to the king, entreating him to facilitate such an end : 
but the bearer, Mr. Penn, was informed that no answer 
would be given to it, on the ground that the congress was 
not assembled by the king’s authority, and that it had 
authorized an appeal to arms. This disdainful and impolitic 
treatment of a petition which, from the spirit that had 
prompted it, deserved a better reception, greatly embittered 
the feelings of the Americans, without strengthening the 
ministers at home; on the contrary, it produced fresh 
divisions in the cabinet, which the duke of Grafton now 
finally quitted; and as lord Dartmouth, who had replaced 
lord Hillsborough as secretary for the colonies, now became 
lord privy seal, he was succeeded in his secretaryship by 
lord George Sackville, who had lately changed his name to 
Germaine, and who, from the stigma under which he had 
laboured since the battle of Minden, and from bis violent 


LXI.] GEORGE 111. 667 

and headstrong temper, was an accession of but little 
advantage to the king’s government. 

The opposition offered a ceaseless resistance to the con¬ 
duct of the ministry, and especially to the plan of hiring 
bodies of mercenary troops in Germany to be sent to 
America: but they were constantly overruled by large 
majorities, though lord North did at last consent to send 
commissioners to America to treat of a reconciliation, with 
authority nominally unlimited, but, in fact, with instructions 
binding them so strictly to the exaction of previous submis¬ 
sion, as an indispensable condition of pardon for the past, 
and of redress for the future, that their mission proved, as 
might have been easily foreseen, completely abortive. 

The warfare languished during the winter. The Americans 
made an ineffectual attempt to surprise Quebec ; but, with 
this exception, no enterprise of any importance was under¬ 
taken by either side. Washington complained greatly of 
the insubordination of the troops, and of the general apathy 
of the people; and the English government failed to send 
any reinforcements to their general, though he was greatly 
in need of them. Gage had returned to England, leaving 
general Howe in command, who decided on evacuating 
Boston, and transferring his troops by sea to the province 
of New Tork. The movement was dictated partly by 
political reasons, since New York, being in a less unfriendly 
colony than Boston, afforded a more trustworthy base for 
future operations. But the Americans not unnaturally 
exulted in the recovery of Boston as a military triumph, 
and struck a medal to commemorate the event. It was 
March when Howe left Boston, but it was June before he 
landed in New York, having waited at Halifax for reinforce¬ 
ments which were promised him from England. He had 
not yet been joined by all the troops which he expected, 
when the war assumed a new character from the declaration 
of independence which, after long deliberation, the congress 
published, and which was signed by the representatives of 
the different states on the 4th of July. 

By the middle of August Howe felt himself strong enough 
to commence active operations, and prepared to attack a 
division of the enemy which was posted at Brooklyn to 
cover the city of New* York. The Americans, being mostly 
raw troops, were defeated with ease; but Howe had not 
skill or energy to improve his victory, and Washington was 


A.D. 

1775- 

1776. 





668 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. allowed to retire in good order to N.ew York; and when he 
was a t last forced to evacuate that city, Howe displayed the 
same want of vigour, and forbore to attack the retreating 
battalions, which were completely at his mercy. His elder 
brother, lord Howe, was the admiral of the fleet which had 
conveyed the reinforcements from England ; he was also the 
chief of the commissioners who had been appointed to treat 
of a reconciliation, and, in spite of the failure of his first 
efforts, he thought that the advantages now gained by the 
British afforded him a fresh opening for negotiation, of 
which he availed himself, trusting partly to his knowledge 
of Franklin, with whom he had been well acquainted in 
England. But Franklin was now one of the bitterest 
enemies of the English connexion, and lord Howe’s well- 
meant endeavours were a second time doomed to meet with 
disappointment. 

Franklin was soon employed on a mission more congenial 
to his feelings, being sent to Paris to negotiate for the 
support of France, from which he obtained secret supplies, 
though, as yet, the government was unwilling to commit 
itself to hostilities with England by any open declaration in 
favour of the Americans. The war still proceeded languidly, 
though at Christmas Washington made a successful attempt 
on the Hessian troops encamped at Trenton, on the Dela¬ 
ware, in which he took a great number of prisoners, follow¬ 
ing up his blow, a few days afterwards, by surprising some 
British regiments on their march to join lord Cornwallis, 
who was now commanding the troops at New York, when 
he again made many prisoners, and, what was of more con- 

• sequence, by these two successful enterprises, diffused 
among his soldiers a confidence in themselves, in which they 
had hitherto been sadly deficient. 

His countrymen did not however confine themselves 
wholly to honourable warfare. Silas Deane, one of the 
ambassadors who had been sent with Franklin to Paris, 
hired a man known as Jack the Painter, but whose real name 
was Aitken, to set iire to the dockyards and shipping in the 
different English harbours. Aitken did succeed in burning 
the rope-house at Portsmouth, but, before he could do any 
more mischief, he was detected and hanged. 

The length of the American winter made the season avail¬ 
able for active operations shorter than in Europe. In the 
spring of 1777, the Americans were encouraged by the 





GEORGE III. 


G69 


LXI.] 

arrival of the young marquis de la Fayette from France, 
whom, though wholly devoid of ability, they hailed as a har¬ 
binger of more substantial assistance. About the same time 
Howe again embarked the chief part of his army on board 
his transports, and sailed with them to the southward, with 
the view of surprising Philadelphia, the capital of the im¬ 
portant province of Pennsylvania, and the seat of the congress. 
Washington, as soon as he discovered his plan, determined 
to fight a battle for the defence of that important city, but 
was defeated, on the banks of a small stream called the 
Brandywine; and at the end of September, the British 
marched into Philadelphia, where the citizens were better 
inclined to their cause than the inhabitants of any other 
part of the United States. Washington made one gallant 
attempt to recover the city, but was foiled, and the two 
armies retired into winter-quarters. 

But on the Canadian frontier, the campaign had been 
less favourable to Great Britain. The attempt made by the 
Americans on Quebec, had suggested to the British govern¬ 
ment the desirableness of preventing any similar aggression 
by advancing their own line of operations as far as the 
Hudson; and in the spring of 1777, a body of 7000 men, 
under general Burgoyne advanced to Ticonderoga, which they 
occupied without resistance. As he proceeded onwards, he 
found great difficulty in obtaining supplies, while the inhabit¬ 
ants of the colony of New Hampshire, which he was invading, 
roused by reports of the atrocities committed by the native 
Indians, who formed a part of his army, took up arms with 
great eagerness, soon raised a force which doubled his 
in numbers, and began to assume the offensive with great 
vigour; cutting off a division of Germans who had been 
detached to procure supplies, intercepting his despatches, 
harassing his flanks, and threatening his outlying divisions so 
that he was forced to unite them to the main body. Still he 
pressed on, hoping to establish himself at Albany, and 
crossed the Hudson with his wdiole force, to attack the 
enemy, who, under the command of general Gates, occupied 
a strong position on Behmus Heights. He drove them from 
their ground, but gained no advantage beyond the barren 
honours of the victory, as they still occupied their fortified 
lines in the rear of the field of battle; and Burgoyne, not 
feeling himself strong enough for a second attack without 
further assistance, remained for some time inactive, in the 


A.D 

1777 










670 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. "hope that sir Henry Clinton’s operations in Gates’3 rear 

1777* would effect a diversion in his favour. But he^ was disap¬ 
pointed ; and being forced at last to venture on a second 
battle on the same ground, he was defeated with severe loss, 
and compelled to retreat towards Saratoga. When he 
reached that village, he found himself entirely surrounded; 
all the fords and passes commanded by the enemy, his 
supplies exhausted, and his'communications and all means of 
obtaining fresh stores wholly cut off. 

After revolving every expedient in his mind, at last, with 
the unanimous consent of his chief officers, he entered into 
a negotiation with Gates, which resulted in the conclusion of 
a convention, by virtue of which the British troops were to 
surrender their arms, and to be allowed to return to England, 
on condition of not serving against America during the 
continuance of the war. But the terms of the convention 
were shamefully violated by the Americans, who, though 
they allowed a few of the officers their liberty on their 
parole, detained the soldiers, 3000 in number, as prisoners 
of war. 

The news of this disaster produced a great effect fin 
Europe ; it determined the French court to acknowledge the 
v independence of the United States; in England, it stirred 
up the people in general to make great efforts for the more 
vigorous prosecution of the war, and private subscriptions 
were entered into for the purpose of raising new regiments; 
but at the same time it only showed the statesmen of the 
kingdom more completely than ever the hopelessness of 
carrying on such a contest with success; and animated the 
opposition to renew their attacks with more vigour than ever 
on the ministry for having caused this disaster by their own 
supineness and mismanagement. Chatham assailed them in 
the lords, and in the commons they had not only to encounter 
Burke, but Fox also, who in spite of the unparalleled irregu¬ 
larity ol his private life, had been rapidly rising in import¬ 
ance, and though not yet thirty years of age, by his skill as 
a debater, and by the close logic and manly argument of his 
speeches, had obtained the ear of the house more completely 
than Burke, whose tact as a public speaker was inferior to 
his other powers, and who, though often soaring to a pitch 
of eloquence which Fox could never reach, yet as often per¬ 
plexed his hearers by a wisdom too deep and far-seeing for 
their appreciation, and by refinement too subtle for their 





GEORGE III. 


671 


LXI.] 

I 

comprehension, or wearied their attention by the didactic 
iteration with which he exhausted his subject. 

The ministers, however, gained a little strength by a 
division which now took place in the counsels of the oppo¬ 
sition ; as the Rockingham party considered it hopeless 
to struggle against the independence of America, which 
lord Chatham would dever consent to acknowledge, a 
refusal somewhat inconsistent with his speeches in former 
years, when he had pronounced it impossible to conquer 
her even single-handed, while it was now certain that in a 
few weeks she would have the open assistance of France. 
The views, however, which he thus expressed made a union 
of the ministers with him appear more practicable than one 
with lord Rockingham; and after carrying through both 
houses bills repealing the duty on tea, renouncing all idea 
of ever taxing America in future, and authorizing the king 
to appoint commissioners to treat with the American 
colonies, on the ground of admitting all their claims except 
that of independence, lord North, finding himself unable 
to prevail on the king to accept his absolute resignation of 
office, began to negotiate with lord Chatham, in the hope 
of effecting a coalition with him, but found that Chatham 
would be satisfied with nothing less than an entire change 
of the ministry, to which the king, with high expressions 
of resentment against him, positively refused to agree, 
declaring that he would rather abandon his crown than 
submit to place himself at the mercy of the opposition. 
Sorely against his will lord North consented still to carry 
on the ministry, and prepared for war with France as well 
as with America; for France had now communicated her 
alliance with the United States in terms so violent, that we 
instantly recalled our ambassador from Paris ; and though 
no declaration of war had as yet taken place, both countries 
were making open preparations for it as inevitable. 

Finding, therefore, that there was no longer any hope of 
a change of measures, the Rockingham party 'determined 
to make an effort for the termination of the war; and on 
the 7th of April, the duke of Richmond moved an address 
to the king, entreating him to withdraw his troops from 
America, and to make peace with the colonies on their 
own terms. He did not expect to succeed; but his motion 
had an effect which he had not anticipated. Chatham, 
who looked on the acknowledgment of the independence of 


A.D. 

1778 . 









672 IITSTOEY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. America as a dismemberment of the empire, which could 

1778. on ly lead to her falling from her high place among the 
nations, resolved, though suffering from gout, to oppose 
the motion in parliament, and in spite of the advice ot 
his physicians, and the entreaties of his friends, came down 
to the house of lords to raise his own voice against it. 
The effort was too great for him f his voice was scarcely 
audible, his sentences mostly unconnected and perplexed. 
One or twice flashes of his former eloquence reminded his 
hearers of what it had been; but in general, his speech 
served to show the prostration of his faculties as clearly as 
his unabated courage and resolution. He sat down, and 
presently afterwards, rising to make some further observa¬ 
tions on the duke of Richmond’s reply, he fell to the ground 
in an apoplectic fit, from which he never recovered. He 
was removed to his house at Hayes, in Kent, where on 
the 11th of May he died, in the seventieth year of his age. 
The parliament unanimously voted him a public funeral in 
Westminster Abbey, and an annuity of 4000Z. a year was 
settled for ever on the heirs of his earldom. 

Thus died one who is so commonly known by the title 
of the great lord Chatham, that the mention of him as such 
may seem to render any further attempt to speak of his 
character as superfluous; yet it cannot be denied that he 
was guilty of great faults; that his conduct in opposition 
was frequently, one may almost say generally, factious and 
turbulent; and that even his first glorious administration 
was rather dazzling than really beneficial to the kingdom. 
He did not scruple to avow himself a lover of honourable 
war, and a fondness of war is certainly a passion to be 
condemned and deplored in any one entrusted with the 
government of a powerful nation. On the other hand, it 
is equally certain that in the short space of four years he 
raised the spirit of the country at home, and its reputation 
abroad, and strengthened the reigning family on the throne 
by uniting &11 classes, even those which had been previously 
the most disaffected, in their service. These were great 
deeds, owing nothing to accident, but being rather the fruit 
of a mind original in its designs, fertile in its resources, 
energetic and undaunted in the prosecution of its projects; 
while his eloquence, though neither illustrated by the varied 
learning and exuberant fancy of Burke, nor by the close 
reasoning and irresistible logic of Fox, and of his own son, 



I 


GEORGE III. 


673 


LXI.] 

was admirably adapted to his favourite objects of rousing a.d. 
the resolution of the people to the subjugation of their 1778. 
enemies, or to the assertion and maintenance of their own 
liberties, of which he was at all times, and against all foes, 
the most intrepid and unwearied champion. 

But it is not to his eloquence, or to his courage, or even 
to his love of liberty, that he owes the confirmation of his 
title, the great, by posterity, so much as to his honest, 
disinterested patriotism. We may allow that he placed 
an exaggerated value on his services, but we must also 
admit that it was a firm belief in the value of those services, 
and an ardent wish to perform such to his country, that 
was the mainspring of all his actions. “ My lord,” he once 
said to the duke of Devonshire, “ I believe that I can save 
this country, and I believe that no one else canand his 
country, which, sooner or later, estimates at their proper 
value the conduct of those who, professing to live for her, 
do, in truth, live only for themselves, can afford to look with 
liberal indulgence at the errors and weaknesses of her real 
patriots, which she pardons to their common humanity, 
holding up as an example to their successors, not so much 
the deeds which they achieved, as the objects that they 
proposed to themselves, and the honest virtue with which 
they pursued them for her benefit and for her glory. 

In May the commissioners appointed, in accordance with 
the bill brought in by lord North, arrived in America; 
but the congress refused to treat with them at all, unless 
they previously acknowledged the independence of the 
states, which was the only condition to w hich they had no 
authority to consent. The year passed off without any 
operations of importance in America except the retirement 
of the British troops from Philadelphia to New York, and 
the consequent return of the congress to the former city. 

War had been declared between Prance and England, and 
a strong fleet had been sent by the French to the American 
coast; but D’Estaing, its commander, baffled the attempts 
of lord Howe to bring him to battle; and his conduct 
rather alienated the Americans from the French,—a feeling 
which w'as aggravated by jealousy of their real objects, 
when D’Estaing issued a proclamation, inviting the Cana¬ 
dians to throw off the English yoke, and to return to their 
former masters. In spite of his presence, several of the 
French West Indian islands were taken by our fleet; and 

x x 







674 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. a detachment, sent by sea to the southern states, took 
1778 — Savannah, the capital of Georgia, and induced many of the 
inhabitants to take up arms in the king’s cause. 

In Europe there was a greater prospect of a decisive 
action between the hostile fleets; as Keppel, the com¬ 
mander of the Channel squadron, engaged D’Orvilliers, the 
Erench admiral, off Ushant. The battle was terminated 
by the darkness; and the next day, wlien Keppel wished 
to renew it, his orders were disobeyed by sir Hugh Palliser, 
his second in command, who afterwards brought an accusa¬ 
tion against Keppel of misconduct in the action, which 
formed Hie grounds for an inquiry by a court-martial. The 
whole affair would not have been worthy of notice in a 
work like this, had it not been for the ill-advised conduct 
of both parties, who made the trial an occasion for a political 
demonstration. Keppel belonged to the opposition ; Palliser 
was a lord of the admiralty; and the leaders of the opposi¬ 
tion went down to Portsmouth, appearing every day in court 
as Keppel’s friends, and showing the greatest interest 
in his cause, and the greatest delight at his honourable 
acquittal, at which the ministerial party were so annoyed 
that, at the general election which took place shortly after¬ 
wards, the king himself condescended to canvass the trades¬ 
men of AVindsor against Keppel, who was a candidate for 
the representation of that borough, and locked the duke of 
Sussex up in the nursery as a punishment for providing 
himself with a cockade of the Keppel colours. 

In the spring of the next year Spain, always under the 
influence of France, after professing a desire to mediate 
between that country and England, on the failure of her 
proposals, recalled her ambassador from London, and de¬ 
clared war against us; and, her fleet uniting with the 
Erench, H’Orvilliers paraded up the Channel with sixty-six 
ships, to which our admiralty could oppose but half that 
number. No battle, however, took place; in fact, the 
Spanish ships were too foul to be able long to keep the sea, 
and, after a vain display, the allied fleets returned to their 
own ports. Our coasts were exposed to more real danger* m 
from a small squadron, commanded by Paul Jones, a Scotch- * 
man, in the American service, who took some ships off the 
coast of Yorkshire, and, sailing on to the Erith of Forth, 
threatened to attack Edinburgh. The citizens began to 
prepare with great spirit for a vigorous defence, but were 






GEORGE III. 


675 


LXI.] 

saved from the necessity of displaying their valour by a 
storm, which drove the squadron off the coast. 

Meanwhile the war was producing great discontent both 
in England and in America. In America the congress had 
proved unable adequately to organize a system for the 
provision of the necessary supplies for the troops, which 
consequently deserted in great numbers; while the paper 
money which they issued was so depreciated in value, that 
the states seemed on the verge of bankruptcy. At the 
same time, in England, the feelings of dissatisfaction were 
leading the people to listen to all kinds of projects for 
parliamentary reform, very extreme views on which sub¬ 
ject were entertained and advocated in the house of lords 
by the duke of Richmond and lord Shelburne, who, since 
the death of lord Chatham, had been regarded as the head 
of his party. Many constituencies were eager to call on 
their representatives to pledge themselves in favour of 
such violent measures as annual parliaments and universal 
suffrage; while lord Rockingham, with more practical 
wisdom, pointed out that the first evil to be checked was 
the corruption of men when chosen into parliament, and 
that the true remedy was to be found in the diminution 
of the influence of the crown over members of both houses. 
This remedy his party, though in opposition, endeavoured 
to supply by a bill, wisely entrusted to Burke, who brought 
it forward in a speech which excited the admiration, and 
extorted the applause even of those most unwilling to 
adopt the reforms which it proposed. For the present, 
though it gave a death-blow* at once to some of the most 
preposterous abuses, it was defeated as a whole measure, 
but was brought forward again in a somewhat modified form 
with better success, when the mover and his friends were 
in office. 

But the discontent assumed a more formidable shape the 
next year, when it was inflamed by the bitterest of all feel¬ 
ings, sectarian animosity. In 1778 the parliament had passed 
a bill, brought in by sir George Saville, to relieve the Roman 
Catholics from some of the most vexatious and flagrantly 
■ unjust of the disabilities to which they were subject; and 
some of the more violent Protestants had raised an outcry 
against it, which had given rise to dangerous disturbances 
in several towns, particularly in Scotland, where they found 
a leader of high rank, though possessed of neither talents 

x x 2 


A.D. 

1779— 

1780. 








676 


HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 


[oh. 

a.d. nor principles, in lord George Gordon, a younger son of the 

1780. ^uke 0 f that name. From Scotland the flame spread to 
England; a Protestant association was formed in London, 
which lord George instigated to concoct an enormous peti¬ 
tion to the house of commons; and when it had been signed 
by above 100,000 persons he desired them to meet him in 
St. George’s Fields, and to carry it in procession to the 
house, to which he undertook to present it. The mob that 
assembled is computed at upwards of 50,000 men; and, 
though its meeting was known long beforehand, the govern¬ 
ment took no steps whatever to protect the city or the citi¬ 
zens from the injury that might be expected from an excited 
and disorderly rabble. No one, however, could possibly have 
anticipated the excesses into which they broke out. They 
insulted all the peers and members of parliament whom 
they thought unfavourable to their views; the most especial 
object of their anger was lord Mansfield, because, as chief 
justice, he had lately presided at a trial w r here a Roman 
Catholic priest had been acquitted. For some days they 
besieged the approaches to the two houses, filling even the 
lobbies of the house of commons, so that soldiers were 
forced to be used to remove them ; and when, on the 7th of 
June, the commons adjourned without having taken the 
petition into consideration, the multitude, which lord George 
had been continually inflaming with violent speeches, began 
to commit the most fearful outrages : they attacked the 
residences of the ministers, which were with difficulty pro¬ 
tected by the troops. Repulsed from Downing Street, they 
proceeded to Newgate, burnt* that strong prison and re¬ 
leased the prisoners, destroyed the other metropolitan gaols, 
and the houses of several of the most active and, therefore, 
obnoxious magistrates; and, flushed with their victory, they 
hastened to inflict the same treatment on the house of lord 
Mansfield, in Bloomsbury Square ; the chief justice himself 
and lady Mansfield having scarcely time to escape at the back 
of the house.. With frantic yells the rabble forced the front 
door, piled up the books, composing one of the finest libra¬ 
ries in the kingdom, in the parlour, as the fuel most easy to 
be obtained, and then set the whole on fire. For two days 
London bore the appearance of a town taken by storm and 
in the possession ot most ferocious enemies; rapine and 
conflagration were raging unchecked, the magistrates were 
terrified, the military officers doubted their power to act till 








VbHhUH 


LXI.] GEORGE IIT. 677 

the riot act had been read an hour (a respite which always 
gave the guilty time to escape), when the firmness of the 
king himself put a stop to ravages which, had it not been 
for his timely vigour, seemed likely to continue unchecked 
till they had destroyed half the capital. He summoned a 
privy council, and, expressing his own belief that the delay, 
imagined to be required by the law, was wholly unnecessary, 
appealed to Wedderburne, the attorney-general, for his 
opinion. Wedderburne, with prompt fearlessness, asserted 
the duty of the soldiers to proceed against a mob engaged 
in such riots the moment that the riot act was read, or even 
before it was read. The king issued instant orders to act 
on his exposition of the law; the soldiers, released from 
their dread of being themselves prosecuted for violation of 
the law, easily dispersed the rioters, though not without 
considerable bloodshed, and London was saved. Numbers 
of the most violent of the rioters were tried and executed, 
though lord George himself, being prosecuted for high 
treason, instead of for sedition, was acquitted. 

On the coast of Spain admiral Rodney gave the Spanish 
fleet a severe defeat, and relieved Gibraltar, which had 
been closely blockaded ever since the commencement 
of the war with Spain; but in America little of im¬ 
portance took place, except a victory gained by lord 
Cornwallis at Camden, and the desertion to the British 
army of general Arnold, which, unfortunately, became the 
cause of the death of major Andre, a gallant officer, and the 
English adjutant-general, who, crossing the American out¬ 
posts in disguise, in order to arrange measures with Arnold, 
was taken prisoner, and put to death as a spy by Washing¬ 
ton, who refused to recognize a pass with which Andre had 
been furnished by Arnold, being influenced, apparently, 
more by vexation at the treachery of the general, who alone, 
of the American officers, had given evidence of any high 
military qualities, than by a strict regard to the laws of 
military service. 

But in the year 1781 events began to crowd upon one 
another with a rapidity which betokened a speedier con¬ 
clusion. Colonel Tarleton, with a strong detachment from 
lord Cornwallis’s army, was defeated with considerable loss 
at a place called the Cowpens; a blow which Cornwallis 
more than counterbalanced by routing general Greene, who 
had nearly double his numbers, at Guildford, and who was 


A.D. 

1780 — 

1781. 






673 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. beaten again by lord Rawdon, at Hobkirk’s Hill, close to 

1781. the battle-field of Camden in the preceding year. The most 
hardly-contested action of all was fought at Eutau Springs, 
in South Carolina, in September, without any decisive 
result, though, in some respects, the Americans reaped the 
fruits of it, as the English were shortly afterwards obliged 
to retreat to Charleston, and the open country, both in 
South Carolina and Georgia, was restored to its allegiance 
to the congress. 

In Virginia matters were proceeding still more unfavour¬ 
ably for the British, where lord Cornwallis and sir Henry 
Clinton were beginning to entertain feelings of jealousy and 
ill will towards each other; and our difficulties were increased 
by the arrival of the count de Grasse in the Chesapeake, 
with a fleet far superior to any British squadron in those seas. 
Encouraged by his arrival, partly also prompted by the 
necessity of performing some decisive exploit which might 
rouse his countrymen from the apathy with which they in. 
general seemed to regard the contest, Washington began to 
act more vigorously against lord Cornwallis, who, with 7000 
men, was posted at a small village called Yorktown, situated 
on a narrow neck of land between the two estuaries which 
form the mouths of the rivers York and James. In the 
latter end of September Washington, with nearly 18,000 
men, and a powerful battery of heavy artillery, proceeded to 
invest the place, and lord Cornwallis, pronouncing it inca¬ 
pable of being long defended, sent urgent representations to 
Clinton for reinforcements. They were promised with all 
speed, and Cornwallis laboured vigorously to strengthen his 
defences so as to enable him to hold out till they arrived. 
But the American artillery, aided by guns brought up from 
the French fleet, was so superior to his, that it silenced his 
batteries, made large breaches in the walls, and burnt some 
of the English transports. In vain the British made a gal¬ 
lant sally, stormed the battery which did them the most 
harm, and spiked the guns; the reinforcements did not 
arrive, and Cornwallis determined to endeavour to retire to 
Gloucester, on the opposite side of the river York. He had 
prepared boats to cross the river, when a violent storm 
forced him to abandon that plan ; the enemies’ fire became 
more fierce and insupportable than ever, and at last he was 
compelled to propose a capitulation. Washington, however, 
would be satisfied with no terms short of an absolute sur- 













LXI.] GEORGE I1T. 679 

render; to which Cornwallis at last agreed, and on the 
9th of October he and his troops laid down their arms. 

The news was received in England by the end of Novem¬ 
ber, and all parties felt that the event thus announced had, 
in fact, terminated the war: the king alone was eager to 
continue it; and, when parliament met a day or two after¬ 
wards, mentioned the disaster in his speech as a circum¬ 
stance that called on the people for vigorous, animated, and 
united exertions. The opposition, however, felt themselves 
so strengthened in the views which they had long pro¬ 
pounded of the impossibility of carrying on the war with 
success, that thev moved amendments to the address in 
both houses; in both they were defeated by large majorities, 
though they were powerfully assisted by a new ally, William 
Pitt, the second son of the late lord Chatham, who had 
lately been returned to parliament as member for Appleby; 
and w r ho, though only twenty-two, displayed an eloquence 
different from, but not inferior to, that of his father, and a 
precocity of genius beyond all example. One or twm motions 
to discontinue the war w r ere defeated, but in February one 
made by Conway was carried by a majority of nineteen, 
■while two motions expressly condemnatory of the ministers, 
and asserting their want of the confidence of parliament, 
were only lost by a few' votes; and at last the king con¬ 
sented to accept lord North’s resignation, though so reluc¬ 
tantly did he submit to the necessity, that, declaring that 
his sentiments of honour would not permit him to send for 
any of the leaders of the opposition and personally “ treat with 
them,” he employed lord Thurlow', the chancellor, to nego¬ 
tiate with lord Eockingham. Once he broke off the negotia¬ 
tion by refusing to consent to Burke’s bill for economical 
reform being made a ministerial measure, though he had 
known beforehand that lord Eockingham would insist upon 
it as indispensable; at another time he actually contem¬ 
plated abdicating the kingdom in preference to changing 
the ministry; secret orders w-ere given to prepare the royal 
yacht for his departure to Hanover; and, with a strange 
diversion of his thoughts, which seems to indicate that his 
mind was at this time affected in some degree by the agita¬ 
tion to which it had been exposed, he even began to occupy 
himself in planning liveries and state dresses for his new 

court. . 

Perhaps the idea of such a violent alternative contributed 


A.D. 
1781 — 
1782 . 








680 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A ^ D * to incline him to more sober counsels; for, at last, on the 

17^2. 20th of March, he authorized lord North to announce to 
the house of commons that his ministry was at an end; 
though his dislike to lord Rockingham, as the former re¬ 
pealer of the stamp act, was still so firmly rooted, that he 
tried to persuade lord Shelburne or lord Gower to under¬ 
take the formation of a new cabinet. Both these noblemen, 
however, declared that lord Rockingham alone could form a 
strong administration; and the king was forced to yield, 
though even now he would not see lord Rockingham, but 
conducted the negotiation with him through lord Shelburne, 
who, in full accordance with his long-established character 
for double dealing, gladly undertook a part which promised 
him an opportunity of creating a divided interest in the 
cabinet. The ministry was speedily formed; lord Rocking¬ 
ham became first lord of the treasury, Shelburne and Fox 
were the secretaries of state; Pitt was offered a subordinate 
office, but refused it, as he had previously declared that he 
never would accept a place of minor importance ; a subordi¬ 
nate office too, to the astonishment of every one, was all 
that could be found for Burke, who was made paymaster of 
the forces, without a seat in the cabinet. It is impossible 
to say what was the reason of this exclusion of one who, 
during the long period that his party had been in opposition, 
had, of all men, done it and his country the greatest service ; 
but it was most ungrateful and impolitic, and also most 
inconsistent, since one of the chief measures of the new 
ministry was to be the bill for economical reform which he 
had framed, and which he was to conduct. More impolitic 
and more mischievous still was the retention of lord Thur- 
low as chancellor; a turbulent, intriguing, selfish politician, 
but who, in spite of a bad private character, and even of an 
utter disregard for all appearance of decorum, had established 
himself in the royal favour, by constant professions of invio¬ 
lable personal adherence to the king, and by violent abuse 
of the Americans. Thurlow was known to be opposed to 
the most important measures which his colleagues were 
about to bring forward, but it was said that the king insisted 
on his retaining the seals as the sole condition on which he 
would permit Fox to have a seat in the cabinet. Rocking¬ 
ham, however, had certainly power sufficient to overrule his 
majesty’s wish on this point; and, as it was known that 
Thurlow would oppose the acknowledgment of American 







GEORGE III. 


631 


LXI.] 

independence, it seems to have been his duty as well as his a.d. 
obvious interest, for the sake of his own comfort, to have *782. 
done so. His forbearance to do so is the more remarkable, 
because his first ministry, as has been related, had been 
overthrown by the intrigues of another chancellor, kept in 
office, like Thurlow, to please the king. 

The new ministry began without delay to apply them¬ 
selves to the great objects which they had so long advocated; 
and to one, which though not previously urged by them, 
pressed itself on their notice at the first moment of their 
entering office. Ireland had hitherto been treated too much 
like a conquered country, (indeed, it is only of late years 
that that reproach has been entirely wiped away from Eng¬ 
lish statesmen,) and the events in America had not rendered 
her more inclined to acquiesce in her condition. She had 
substantial grievances to complain of; not only had old acts 
of Henry VII., taking away from her parliament all power 
of independent legislation, been enforced by fresh enact¬ 
ments passed in the reign of George I., but an embargo 
had been laid upon her trade, which, without any such re¬ 
straint, would have suffered sufficiently from the war with 
her best customers, the Americans. What was worst of all, 
when the country was agitated by apprehensions of a French 
invasion, it was found that the war had so drained the island 
of troops, that it was quite defenceless. Without waiting 
for orders, the Irish began, in pure loyalty to the crown, to 
take up arms. The inhabitants of Ulster took the lead ; but 
the enthusiasm, once kindled, spread through all the pro¬ 
vinces, till the volunteers amounted to 50,000 men. This 
force, however, was only meant as a terror to foreign ene¬ 
mies ; from England they sought redress only by peaceful 
and lawful means, petitioning the English parliament, when 
lord North first proposed to conciliate the colonies by mea¬ 
sures of relief to their trade, that they, citizens of the sister 
kingdom, might not be placed in a worse condition than the 
Americans; and lord North, strong in the support of the 
Rockingham party on this question, would have conceded 
all their demands, if he had not been daunted by the illiberal 
objections of some of the principal trading and manufactur¬ 
ing towns of England. His submission to their outcry pro¬ 
duced great discontent in Ireland, where there arose, just 
when she most needed him, almost the only real patriot, as 









A.D. 

1782 . 


682 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

far as devotion to lier interests is concerned, that she has 
ever produced. 

Henry Grattan was singularly fitted to be her guide in 
such a cause; with the purest disinterestedness he combined 
sagacity to perceive the proper object of her efforts, a single¬ 
ness of purpose which could not be diverted from it, a 
courage which could not be driven from it, and eloquence of 
the most impassioned and varied character to encourage her 
champions, or to gain over her adversaries. His wise prin¬ 
ciples of religious toleration engaged the Homan Catholics 
in his support; and thus, as the leader of an united people, 
he pressed their claims with irresistible power on the go¬ 
vernment. His demands may be comprised under two heads : 
freedom of trade, and equality in legislation; and he was 
preparing to submit a motion framed in accordance with 
these objects to the Irish house of commons, when lord 
North’s administration fell. He only waited till the new 
ministry was declared, and then carried an unanimous 
address from the Irish house of commons to the crown, 
urging that no body but the Irish parliament could have a 
right to make laws for Ireland; and the ministers, wisely 
feeling that unwilling subjects are little better than, enemies, 
resolved on frankly conceding all that was asked of them, 
and at once passed a bill for the repeal of the obnoxious 
act of George I. This one measure, by leaving the Irish 
to enact laws for themselves, removed all their discontent, 
and diffused joy and confidence in the justice of England 
throughout the whole island. If England was to become 
weaker by the loss of her- American colonies, that bill, by 
securing her the affection of Ireland, more than made amends 
for the loss. 

The promised reform in England proceeded with equal 
rapidity. Bills incapacitating government contractors from 
becoming members of parliament, and revenue officers from 
voting at elections, were carried in spite of the opposition of 
the chancellor, and the importance of the latter of the two 
may be estimated by the fact that the number of persons 
disfranchised by it amounted to 12,000, and that they had 
the preponderating influence in no less than seventy 
boroughs. Still more important was Burke’s great bill for 
economical reform, which was introduced by a message from 
the crown. It was hardly as large a measure as that which 





LXI.] GEORGE III. 683 

he bad introduced two years before, probably because it was a.d. 
found impossible to obtain the king’s consent to subject the *782. 
duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall to its operation'; but it 
was sufficiently extensive to save 70,000/. a year to the 
nation, and to show the disinterestedness of the ministers, 
who surrendered a vast amount of valuable patronage. 

The greatest question of all was how to terminate the 
American war; and on this serious differences arose in the 
cabinet, owing mainly to the awkward division of duties 
between the two secretaries of state; America being in 
Shelburne’s department, and Paris, where the negotiations 
were carried on, in Fox’s; and partly also to the excessive 
jealousy which Fox at all times entertained of Shelburne, 
who gave his colleagues some reason to complain of his 
want of candour to them, by concealing from them some 
important propositions which he had received from Franklin. 

That the subjection of America to England could be pre¬ 
served, was an idea entertained by no member of the cabi¬ 
net ; but it was debated earnestly whether her independence 
should be at once acknowledged, or whether the recognition 
of it should be kept back, and made a condition in the 
treaty to be proposed, and, as such, a handle for obtaining 
favourable terms on other points. It was wisely decided to 
do with a good grace what must inevitably be done. In the 
course of May the independence of America was formally 
acknowledged ; and immediately afterwards a bill was brought 
in and rapidly carried, authorizing the conclusion of a peace 
with the United States of America. This peace lord Eock- 
ingham was not to have the honour of concluding. His 
health had long been delicate, and at last it was discovered 
that he was afflicted with water on the chest. Towards the 
end of June he was further attacked with influenza, then a 
new disease in the fashionable world; and on the 1st of 
July he died, having in his two short administrations per¬ 
formed more signal services to his country than it often 
falls to a minister to render it in a long official career. 

The king at once appointed lord Shelburne to succeed to 
the treasury, but Fox and Burke, with others of lord Kock- 
ingham’s adherents, refused to serve under him. The most 
important change, however, was in the chancellorship of the 
exchequer, where lord John Cavendish was replaced by 
Mr. Pitt, who thus became a cabinet minister at three-and- 
twenty. 








A.D. 

1782 - 

1783 . 


684 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

The new ministry continued the negotiations for peace, 
which were facilitated by the total failure of the Spaniards 
in the siege of Gibraltar. Shortly after lord Rockingham’s 
accession to office, the Trench fleet had received a total 
defeat off Jamaica from Rodney; but the Trench still com¬ 
bined with the Spaniards in pressing on the siege of Gibral¬ 
tar with an immense armament, while general Elliot de¬ 
fended the fortress, not only with dauntless resolution, but 
with the most unbounded fertility and originality of re¬ 
sources. So confident were the combined forces of taking 
it, that some of the Trench princes of the blood came from 
Paris, hoping to share in the final triumph, but in reality 
only to witness the entire discomfiture of the vast efforts 
fruitlessly made by both countries. One of the most skilful 
of the Trench engineers contrived a number of huge floating 
batteries, which he asserted would prove impregnable and 
unassailable; but when they were brought into action, the 
ceaseless fire of red-hot shot, which Elliot directed against 
them, set them in a blaze; and though the combined fleets 
still remained in the straits, keeping up the semblance of a 
blockade which they were unable to enforce, in effect, their 
whole hope of success was destroyed by the middle of 
September. 

At first the negotiations, which were carried on at Paris, 
where Tranklin was the American ambassador, proceeded 
slowly, the courts of Trance and Spain not being really 
desirous to terminate the war; but, after a time, the Ame¬ 
ricans becoming jealous of the Trench, consented to treat 
separately, and signed a provisional treaty. The knowledge 
of that fact rendered the Trench and Spaniards more accom¬ 
modating; and in January, 1783, peace between all the 
belligerent powers was finally concluded: the independence 
of America being acknowledged, and the Americans being 
admitted to a participation in the fur trade and Newfound¬ 
land fisheries. Some of our conquests among the West 
Indian islands and in India were restored to the Trench, 
who also gave back some of the islands which they had 
taken from us; Minorca and the Tloridas were ceded to 
Spain, in exchange for Providence, the Bahama Isles, and 
some commercial rights which had been frequent objects of 
negotiation between the two countries. 

Thus ended the American war; caused by childish impo¬ 
licy, and conducted with great imbecility by the ministers, 



GEORGE III. 


685 


LXI.] 

and with great want of skill by the commanders; but termi- a.d. 
nated on conditions that might well have been the foundation U83. 
of friendship and alliance between two nations of the same 
blood and the same language; and still intimately con¬ 
nected by many ties which a war of a few years could not 
sever. At George III.’s first reception of the ambassador 
of the new republic, both parties expressed their sentiments 
with dignity and proper feeling. The ambassador professed 
that he should esteem himself the happiest of men, if he 
could be instrumental in recommending his country more 
and more to the royal benevolence; and the king declared 
that, though he had been the last man in his kingdom to 
consent to the separation of America from England, yet, now 
that that separation was made, he would be the first to meet 
the friendship of the United States as an independent 
power. 

But the sentiments thus worthily expressed were for some 
time not acted up to: mutual jealousies and suspicions 
sprung up, which more than once brought the two nations 
to the verge of war, and once, as will be related hereafter, 
actually involved them in it; and at subsequent periods, 
indications of the same unfriendly feelings have been but 
too apparent, though the temperate wisdom of the real 
statesmen of both countries has prevented any collision; but 
in the last year, an event has taken place which may be 
looked upon as the harbinger of more kindly relations 
between the two countries:—An English ship called the 
Resolute, one of those which had quitted our shores for the 
Arctic Seas, on a voyage of discovery, was found by some 
American vessels, deserted by her crew, wandering amid the 
half-frozen waters of the Northern Atlantic. The American 
government, which had already shown a brotherly interest 
in the fate of Eranklin and his unfortunate comrades, 
repaired and refitted her, and with graceful liberality sent 
her to England, as a present to the English nation. She 
was received as such a people ought to receive such a present; 
with one universal acclamation of grateful acknowledgment, 
not of the value of the gift, but of the noble and friendly 
sympathy which had prompted it. The queen paid a visit to 
the officers appointed to bring her over, on board the restored 
ship ; but a stronger evidence of the national feeling was to 
be found in the unanimity with which the Resolute, as re¬ 
fitted by the Americans, was made a principal feature in the 








686 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. Christmas pantomimes at every theatre in London, and at 
1783 . cordial shouts with which her appearance was nightly 
hailed by the assembled multitudes. 


CHAPTER LXII. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

The conditions of the peace were no sooner communicated 
to parliament, than they were vehemently attacked bv both 
parties of the opposition. Fox was eager to justify the 
objection to lord Shelburne, which he had made the ground 
of his resignation of office, and which was generally, even by 
his own friends, considered an insufficient motive; and lord 
North was naturally inclined to avail himself of any plausi¬ 
ble opportunity of retaliating on those who had so fiercely 
opposed himself while minister. The most assailable points 
of the treaties appear to have been the concessions made to 
France in India, by the restoration of Pondicherry and 
Chandernagore; vet this was the point of all others to which 
least objection was made; which certainly seems a proof how 
little Indian politics attracted the attention of the generality 
of statesmen. They were defended, especially by Pitt, 
mainly on the general ground that our finances and resources 
of all kinds had been so much exhausted by the long war 
against so formidable a combination of enemies, that, as was 
not strange, peace was more necessary for us than for them. 
The fact may be doubted; it was' true that the war had 
added above a hundred millions to our national debt, but 
it was believed to have cost our enemies still more, while 
they were certainly less able than ourselves to bear such an 
additional burden; but, true or not, it was felt to be an 
ignoble argument, and failed to convince the house of com¬ 
mons, who condemned the ministers by two successive divi¬ 
sions ; though in the house of lords they had a majority of 
thirteen in their favour. 

Lord Shelburne resigned; and again the king was greatly 
perplexed. Lord JNorth had lost much of his former favour 
in his eyes by his union with Mr. Fox, the object of the 
king’s especial dislike, on the subject of the peace, and the 
government was offered to Mr. Pitt, who showed a prudence 
rare in so young a man by declining the offer. Lord North 
was then invited to return to the treasury, but the arrange- 








LXI1 -] GEORGE hi. 687 

merits into which he had entered with Fox prevented his 
acquiescence in this plan. One expedient after another was 
proposed in vain; Pitt was again more than once appealed 
to for his aid, but saw too clearly the certainty of failure to 
be induced to make the attempt to form a ministry. After 
many weeks of uncertainty had passed, the commons pre¬ 
sented an address to the king, begging him to form a strong 
administration, and at last, six weeks after lord Shelburne’s 
resignation, the celebrated coalition ministry w r as formed, 
North and Pox being the two secretaries of state, and the 
duke of Portland, a man of no particular abilities or reputa¬ 
tion, being first lord of the treasury. 

A coalition such as this, between men who had been so 
violently opposed as North and Fox, was very unpopular, 
not only with the country in general, but with most sober 
thinkers, who argued that a morbid and corrupt appetite for 
place must have been the chief incentive to it. Fox himself 
was aware of the questionable character of such a step, and 
said that it was one which success alone could justify; and 
with success it was not crowned. It is on him that the 
chief part of the blame has fallen. Lord North, though 
advocating a line of conduct to which Fox objected, had said 
nothing of him personally which went beyond the bounds 
of fair argument; but Fox, not content with opposing lord 
North’s policy, had made the most bitter attacks on his 
personal honour; had declared that his crimes were such as 
could only be expiated with his blood ; that he should fear 
to trust himself in the same room with him, and that if he 
ever acted in concert with him he would be content to be 
held eternally infamous. His conduct now was evidently a 
complete retraction of all these assertions, which lord North 
could hardly be blamed for accepting; but the people in 
general considered that if these denunciations had not ori¬ 
ginally been dishonestly made, it was plain that they now 
had been dishonestly abandoned. 

The session which ensued was remarkable chiefly for a 
motion for parliamentary reform, brought forward by Pitt, 
proposing the disfranchisement of every borough which 
should hereafter be proved to be corrupt, and a large addi¬ 
tion to the number of the existing members for the different 
counties and for London. The proposed bill excited no 
attention in the country, was resisted by lord North, and 
defeated by a great majority. In spite, however, of this 


A.D, 

1783 . 











688 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. appearance of strength, the ministry was fated to be as 
1783 . shortlived as the preceding one. But, before relating the 
circumstances which led to its fall, we must return to the 
affairs of India, and to the events which had taken place in 
that country since the conclusion of the war at the beginning 
of the present reign. 

1762— After Clive’s return from Bengal, the government of that 
!772. country fell into great disorder ; the conduct of the British 
officials in general was characterized by every kind of rapa¬ 
city and aggression, and that of the governor, Mr. Van- 
sittart, by vacillation and weakness. Such conduct excited 
the hostility and removed the fears of the native princes, ever 
fickle and restless ; till, in 1763, Meer Cossim, whom, after 
deposing Meer Jaffier, we had lately made nabob of Bengal, 
thought himself able wholly to throw off his subjection to 
the company, and signalized his emancipation by a massacre 
of the principal English at Patna. He was instantly ex¬ 
pelled by the troops, which were moved from Calcutta to 
the scene of blood, and Meer Jaffier was restored. The 
nabob of Oude took up arms to restore Meer Cossim, and 
marched 50,000 men to Buxar, a town on the Ganges, a 
little above Patna, only to receive a decisive defeat from 
major Munro, who, the next year, overran his whole country 
and took some of his chief cities. 

The constant advance of British victory was not, however, 
so hard for the natives to bear as the ceaseless severity of 
British oppression and extortion. Too many of the civil 
servants of the company looked upon India merely as a field 
for enriching themselves with a celerity impracticable in 
Europe, and the complaints of their rapacity and cruelty 
reached the ears of the directors at home, who were the more 
ready to listen to them because the affairs of the company did 
not thrive as the affairs of the individuals complained of; in 
fact, while its servants were amassing enormous wealth, the 
company itself was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was 
evident that a reform was needed, and Clive was the only 
man connected with the company possessed of genius and 
authority sufficient to devise and to enforce the necessary 
measures. He accepted the office of governor-general and 
commander-in-chief, and, in 1765, arrived in India with 
almost unlimited powers. 

Brilliant as had been his achievements in war, his genius 
now shone, if possible, more brightly still in civil adminis- 





anHHIHHHNmHn 


LXII.] GEORGE III. 689 

tration. He only remained in India a year and a half; but a.d. 
in that short time he re-established order and content 
throughout his whole government. His plans were vehe- 
mently resisted by many of the officers of the civil service, 
whose exorbitant gains were to be terminated by them. He 
dismissed the most guilty or the most refractory, and the 
rest, awed by his resolution, yielded. The army, especially 
the officers, prepared to rise in open mutiny rather than 
submit to the retrenchments which he directed, and were 
headed by sir Robert Fletcher, the second in command to 
Clive himself. Clive repaired in person to the camp; the 
native troops stood by him to a man. He cashiered Fletcher 
and others of the ringleaders, pardoned the rest, and restored 
obedience and discipline in the army; at the same time, by 
his arrangements with the native princes, lie obtained for 
the company the entire sovereignty over Bengal and the 
adjacent provinces, burdened only with the payment of an 
annual revenue to the rulers, who abdicated all but their 
titles of dignity, and a nominal sovereignty, which they 
were no longer permitted to exercise. 

For these great services he was but ill requited. His 
uncompromising spirit of reform had provoked the secret 
enmity of many who did not dare openly to raise a voice 
against him. After his departure from India his regulations 
were but weakly enforced by his successors; fresh acts of 
injustice by the officials of the company produced fresh 
complaints. A terrible famine, the like of which had never 
been heard of in the history of the world, carrying off, as 
it was computed to have done, one-third of the inhabitants 
of Bengal, had excited a fearful outcry, which some of Clive’s 
enemies sought to turn to their own purposes, alleging the 
calamity to have been aggravated by his commercial regu¬ 
lations. Lord North, then at the head of the ministry, 
appointed a committee to inquire into the whole state of the 
company’s affairs, who summoned Clive before them, and 
examined all his transactions with a severity which he felt, 
and loudly complained of, as an insult. The commons, as a 
bodv, were more just to him, and passed a vote that he had 
rendered great and meritorious services to his country; but 
the treatment which he had received sank deep into his 
mind. From his youth he had been subject to fits of 
melancholy, which, at the commencement of his career, had 
twice led him to meditate self-destruction; they now re- 

y y 







690 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. turned, prompting him to similar attempts, and, in Novem- 
J^74 p er ^ p 774 ? this consummate general and statesman died by 
his own hand. 

His mantle fell upon a worthy successor. The year 
before his death lord North had new-modelled the whole 
system of Indian government, had given the governor of 
Bengal authority over the other presidencies, and, in conse¬ 
quence, Warren Hastings, whose appointment by Clive as 
resident at Moorshedabad has been mentioned in a former 
chapter, and who was now governor of Bengal, became 
governor-general of India. He entered upon his office at a 
critical time. He found the finances of the company in 
great disorder, partly from the terrible famine already men¬ 
tioned, and partly from a war in which the presidency of 
Madras had been involved with Ilyder Ali, the rajah of 
Mysore, who, though defeated in more than one battle, dis¬ 
played a much more resolute character, and a far higher 
degree of military talent, than had been witnessed in any 
other native prince. By the rapidity of his marches he had, 
on more than one occasion, gained considerable advantages 
over some of the British detachments, and had laid waste, 
almost without resistance, the territories of our ally, the 
nabob of Arcot. Peace had been made with him before 
Hastings received his appointment; but the efFects of the 
war survived in the debt with which it had encumbered the 
company, and the consequent diminution of their dividends. 
Hastings at once applied himself to the twofold and appa¬ 
rently incompatible task of relieving the distress of the 
native subjects of the company, and, at the same time, 
raising the revenues of the proprietors; and he completely 
succeeded in both objects, though some of the means to 
which he had recourse show a mind not trammelled by too 
rigid scruples of equity, and, at a later period, brought upon 
him that impeachment which is one of the most remarkable 
events connected with the history of our Indian empire. 
At the same time he placed the relations of the company, 
with the native rulers of their territories, on a more intel¬ 
ligible and satisfactory footing. Hitherto, though the com¬ 
pany did in fact govern Bengal and their other provinces 
with absolute authority, they were nominally only the 
vassals of the mogul at Delhi, and of the nabob at Moor¬ 
shedabad. This system Hastings now put an end to 
depriving the nabob of even the slightest ostensible share 



■ Mi ■—u iMWifiaftrafuritwimirmiwiiniiigMni 


LXII.] GEORGE III. 691 

in the government, and of half the income which Clive had a.d. 
assigned to him, and transferring the entire administration *773— 
of the whole province to the servants of the company. The 
mogul was treated with greater severity. His annual allow¬ 
ance from the company of 300,000/. a year was stopped 
altogether, and some districts which had been ceded to him 
were wrested from him, and sold to the nabob of Oude for 
half a million of money. For another sum of almost equal 
amount Hastings lent the nabob the aid of a body of British 
troops to subdue the Bohillas, a tribe which, as the reward 
of military service, had in times past obtained from the mo¬ 
gul a grant of the fertile plains between the western frontier 
of Oude and the Granges, which, valiant as they were, they 
preserved in peace and increasing prosperity, while the sur¬ 
rounding provinces were a prey to the horrors and miseries 
of war. They had, however, violated their engagements to 
the nabob of Oude, the performance of which had been 
guaranteed by the company, and the nabob was eager to 
crush them. And the money which was thus procured was 
skilfully applied to getting rid of nearly all the embarrass¬ 
ments which pressed most heavily on the company. 

This relief from instant pressure enabled Hastings to turn 
his attention to carrying out the improvements in the whole 
system of administration which Clive had begun. Unfortu¬ 
nately, though governor-general, he had not the absolute 
authority enjoyed by his successors at the present time; but 
he was liable to be controlled by a council of five, of which 
he himself was a member, having, in cases of an equal divi¬ 
sion of opinion between the members present, a casting vote. 

This council was established at the same time that he him¬ 
self was appointed governor-general, and three of the mem¬ 
bers were sent out from England, all previously unacquainted 
with India, general Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Fran¬ 
cis, the author of Junius, who, if we may trust a saying 
attributed to George III., had received this appointment to 
secure the cessation of his writings. The other councillor was 
Mr. Barwell, an old servant of the company, and, as a man 
well acquainted with India, inclined to support the governor- 
general. But Francis, with his colleagues from England, 
set himself resolutely to work to oppose him on every point. 

They attacked his dealings with the nabob of Oude; they 
condemned his share in the Rohilla war; and at last began 
almost to invite the natives to prefer charges against him, 

v v 9, 







A.D. 

177-">- 
17«5. 


692 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

which they, without any authority to do so, showed them¬ 
selves prepared to entertain and to decide. 

The quarrels between the governor-general and the 
majority of the council produced great scandal in England. 
Lord North desired to procure his recal, and the directors 
of the company were willing to grant it, but were overruled 
by the court of proprietors. Almost at the same time 
Monson and Clavering died, and, till their places could be 
filled up by instructions from England, Hastings, by his own 
and Barwell’s vote, was supreme in the council. The times 
became more critical. Erance, as ally of the Americans, 
became the enemy of England, and it was soon understood 
that she had recommenced her intrigues with the ever-rest- 
less princes of India, and especially with the peishwah, or 
ruler of the Mahrattas, a formidable tribe, whose principal 
city was Poonah, not far from Bombay. The sense of 
danger compelled lord North and the directors to lay aside 
all thoughts of recalling from India the only man capable of 
confronting it. Hastings’ period of office, which was fixed 
by law at five years, was on the point of expiring. His 
appointment was renewed ; and, feeling himself more firmly 
fixed in his seat, he began to adopt more decided measures. 
He at once attacked and reduced the Erench settlements, 
Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and sent an army under 
general Goddard into the country of the Mahrattas. God¬ 
dard was an able soldier. He speedily retrieved a disaster 
which had befallen an expedition from Bombay, took some 
of the strongest cities and fortresses of the country, and 
defeated Scindia and Holkar, the Mahratta chieftains, in a 
pitched battle. 

War, however, begot war. Hyder Ali, thinking Hastings’ 
attention fully occupied with the Mahrattas, again raised 
his standard, and invaded the territory of Madras with a 
numerous army, defeated one British division, and forced 
Munro, at the head of 5000 men, to retreat in disorder, 
abandoning all his baggage, stores, and artillery to his 
triumphant enemies. It was well for England and for India 
that Hastings was still the governor-general. A swift vessel 
bore to Calcutta the news of Hyder’s irruption, and of the 
helplessness of the Madras authorities. Hastings’ measures 
were taken in an instant. He made peace with the Mah¬ 
rattas, sent large sums of money and large reinforcements 
of troops by sea to Madras, and entrusted the chief com- 











LXII.] GEORGE III. 693 

mand to sir Eyre Coote, who had fortunately lately returned 
to India, and who, though no longer in the enjoyment of 
youth, health, or of the energy which had won him his 
reputation under the walls of Wandewash, was still a great 
soldier, and one feared by every power in India from the 
renown of his old exploits. At the beginning of 1781 
Coote landed at Madras. He at once took the field, and 
Hyder, raising the sieges of Wandewash and Vellore, 
hastened to encounter him. Coote had about 9000 men. 
Hyder’s forces were almost innumerable, and many of his 
regiments, and the whole of his artillery, were commanded 
by French officers. The two armies met at Porto Novo, a 
town on the coast a little to the south of Madras, where the 
British discipline and valour again proved irresistible. 
Before the end of the year Hyder sustained another defeat 
at Pollilore. The next year he was again beaten at Arnee ; 
and shortly afterwards both he and his conqueror died, 
Hyder being succeeded by his son Tippoo, a prince equal to 
him in courage and fondness for war, and not very inferior 
in capacity. 

But the war with Hyder, though thus successful, involved 
the government in vast expenses beyond the ordinary 
amount of revenue; and to defray it Hastings was driven 
to fresh exactions from the native princes dependent upon, 
or tributary to the company. Benares, situated a little 
below the junction of the Jumna with the Granges, was the 
foremost city in all India for wealth and sanctity; and 
its rajah was regarded with especial reverence. He had 
formerly paid tribute to Oude; but the nabob of Oude had 
transferred his rights to the company, and the tribute had 
been paid at’Calcutta with scrupulous regularity; but, on 
the breaking out of the Mahratta war, Hastings exacted 
from the rajah a further contribution of 50,000/., and 
repeated the exaction year after year, increasing his de¬ 
mands, till, at last, in 1781, he required a payment of half 
a million of money; and, when it was refused, proceeded 
himself to Benares, and arrested the rajah in his own 
palace. He nearly brought destruction on himself. The 
populace of Benares, more warlike than that of most of 
the Indian cities, rose in defence of their sovereign, and 
for a day or two Hastings, who was only accompanied by 
one or two companies of sepoys, was in imminent personal 
danger. He barricaded the house in which he had taken up 


A.B. 

1773— 

1735. 




694 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 


A.D. 

1773— 

1735. 


liis lodging, and sent secret messages to the nearest military 
post for aid. Major Popham, an officer who had already 
distinguished himself by more than one deed of skill and 
gallantry, hastened with a sufficient force to extricate his 
chief, routed the army which the rajah had collected, and 
Hastings, as a punishment for the rajah’s resistance, added 
his territories to the dominions of the company. 

His conduct at Benares was one of the acts for which 
he was afterwards most severely called to account; but the 
sums obtained from the rajah had become the prize of the 
soldiers; and, as Hastings had need of money, he turned 
to the nabob of Oude, who, by complaining of the burden 
of some of the arrangements for the aid of the company’s 
troops, to which, while in need of them, he had willingly 
consented, supplied Hastings with an excuse for further 
requisitions ; and, as he was unable to procure the sums 
he demanded from the nabob, whose indolence and in¬ 
capacity had thrown all his affairs into a state of embar¬ 
rassment, he exacted it from his mother and grandmother, 
the begums of Oude, imprisoning these princesses, and 
almost starving them till they paid 1,200,000Z. for their 
ransom. 

These acts of violence and extortion, not to be justified, 
and only to be at all excused on the imperious plea of state 
necessity, are the blots on Hastings’ wise and beneficent 
career, which exposed him to the bitterest attacks ever 
made on a public man, whose personal uprightness and 
disinterestedness it was impossible to doubt; but they 
must not blind us to the general tenor of his government, 
which was not only eminently wise, far-sighted, and vigorous, 
but was also so humane and liberal, that it riot only com¬ 
manded the admiration and respect of all the English in 
India, whether in civil or military employments, but also con¬ 
ciliated the confidence and affection of the natives to an 
extent which no subsequent governor, able and successful 
as most of them have been, has ever succeeded in doing; 
and this universal popularity and reverence he acquired by 
no indulgence of evil passions, by no connivance at abuse. 
He won the good will of the natives, while depriving their 
princes of every semblance of power; he secured the at¬ 
tachment of the civil servants of the company, while 
checking with a firm hand all irregularity and excess of 
every kind, and while putting an end to the attempts of 







LXII.] GEORGE III. 695 

the judges to usurp a supreme and lucrative authority over 
the whole of Bengal; while, though not himself a soldier, 
his undaunted courage, and the evident military genius 
which he displayed on the occasion o? the invasion of 
Hyder Ali, gained the esteem and love of the soldiers, so 
that, as he himself boasted, the alacrity with which they 
hastened to his rescue when he was in danger at Benares, 
was never exceeded by any display of attachment to their 
own officers. 

To his country in general his services had been incal¬ 
culable in the eyes of all who duly value the stability of 
our Indian empire. England, during the greater part of 
his administration, was engaged in war with America, 
backed by the chief powers of Europe. In America she 
met with great disasters; in Europe she did not escape 
some important losses ; but in India (in spite of the in¬ 
trigues of the French, not long before equal, and perhaps 
superior to us in the opinion of most of the natives) the 
same period produced nothing but increase of territory, 
of revenue, of power, and of reputation, while the French 
themselves were for a while completely expelled from the 
whole continent, though they subsequently re-established 
themselves on the Madras coast; and, at the conclusion of 
peace, the places which Hastings had wrested from them 
were restored to them. 

The obloquy with which he was assailed in England on 
his return he himself received a grateful testimony that he 
had survived, when, in 1813, on his appearing in the house 
of commons to give evidence on an inquiry into the affairs 
of the company, the whole of the assembled members stood 
up uncovered to receive him; and, in India, we are told by 
a great writer 7 , personally acquainted with the scene of 
his labours, and certainly not inclined to extenuate his 
questionable actions, the natives still speak of him with 
reverence as the greatest of Englishmen. 

But, successful as the administration of Hastings had 
been, it was evident that that success was owing solely 
to his own genius, and that the whole system of the govern¬ 
ment of India was faulty. In India the governor was 
controlled by the council. In England the ministers and 
the directors united were unable to recal a governor, 

7 Mr. Macaulay, to whose exquisite sketches of Clive and Hastings the author 
has been greatly indebted. 


A.D. 

1773- 

1785. 








696 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


i[CH. 

A.n. however desirable it might be to do so, unless they could 

178b. obtain the consent of the court of proprietors, where money 
could create such numbers of fictitious votes as to destroy 
the weight which otherwise might have been attached to 
their decisions. Fox, therefore, employed the parliamentary 
recess in devising a measure to remedy these evils; and, 
when the houses met in November, he introduced a bill, 
vesting the future direction of the company in seven 
directors, named in it, whose successors were to be 
appointed by the ministers, with a subordinate board of 
assistant-directors to be appointed by the proprietors of 
India stock, but removable by the directors. Other clauses 
of the bill went into minute details of the manner in which 
the directors were to exercise the vast powers entrusted 
to them. It was vigorously opposed by Pitt, on the 
ground that it was a violation of the charters and privileges 
of the company; that by erecting and investing with such 
powers a board neither elected by the people, nor removable 
by the crown, it was an equal violation of the principles of 
the English constitution; and that by placing, as it did, 
the whole of the patronage of India in the hands of the 
ministers, it was giving them the means of securing a 
perpetuity of their own power. The bill, however, was 
passed by large majorities in the commons; but when it 
arrived in the house of lords, it was again denounced by 
lord Thurlow, who was known to be in great favour with 
the king, as a measure calculated to take the crown from the 
king’s head, and to place it on the head of Mr. Pox. The 
king himself was easily persuaded to take a similar view of it, 
and to let a declaration on his part be known, that he would 
consider as his enemies whoever voted for it. Eox in vain 
endeavoured to frighten the peers from being influenced 
by the royal wish, by supporting and carrying through the 
house of commons a resolution that, “ to report any opinion 
of his majesty upon any bill depending in either house of 
parliament, is a high crime and misdemeanour, derogatory 
to the honour of the crown, a breach of the fundamental 
privileges of parliament, and subversive of the constitution 
of the country.” Nor can it be denied that the resolution 
was well founded, and that the king was ill advised in per¬ 
mitting his name to be used as it was used; but the opinion 
of the commons had no weight in the upper house, which, 
on the 17th of December, rejected the bill, and the next 




L XIII.] GEORGE Til. 697 

day the king dismissed the ministry, marking the excess of 
his resentment against North and Fox byrefusing to receive 
the seals from them in person, but desiring them to send 
them by their under-secretaries. 


CHAPTER LXIII. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

The coalition, which, as Fox himself had confessed, could 
only be justified by its success, had thus failed; and, when 
the king now again applied to Pitt to undertake the govern¬ 
ment, Pitt considered that those who had formed it had 
lost so much character and strength by their failure, as 
to render his chance of being able to retain the power 
offered him more probable. He, therefore, now accepted 
the offices of first lord of the treasury, and chancellor of 
the exchequer. Lord Carmarthen and Sidney were the 
secretaries of state; Thurlow was lord chancellor; and the 
treasurership of the navy was given to one, who soon, 
though in a subordinate situation, became a most important 
and influential member of the ministry, Mr. Hundas. 

The new minister had great difficulties to encounter. 
He had but a scanty majority in the lords, a decided 
minority in the commons. He himself was young and 
inexperienced, while his adversaries had a long acquaint¬ 
ance with parliamentary tactics; and two of them, Burke 
and Fox, were most consummate orators and debaters; 
but Fox’s disappointment and anger at his late defeat were 
so furious, that in his opposition to his ^successors, he lost 
sight of every principle of the constitution. The majority 
of the house of commons was so clearly in his favour, that 
it was evident that it must soon be dissolved; and, as his 
hope of recovering his power rested on its support, in defi¬ 
ance not only of constitutional law, but of common sense 
also, he pronounced that the crown had not the power of dis¬ 
solving the parliament in the middle of a session; and, in 
accordance with this declaration, demanded from Pitt a 
promise that no dissolution should take place. Pitt, who 
was never surpassed in the promptitude with which he 
discerned and took advantage of the mistakes of an adver¬ 
sary, loftily refused to bargain away the royal prerogative 
in the house of commons; and, with resolute calmness, 


A.b. 

17 83 . 


1784. 








A.D. 

1784 . 


698 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

resolved to fight the battle of the constitution in the face 
of an adverse majority, confident that the good sense of the 
people would gradually range them on his side. He was 
not deceived. Fox and his adherents carried several motions, 
increasing in vehemence, to condemn or prevent a dissolu¬ 
tion, declaring that, if the parliament should be dissolved, 
it would be a high crime in any minister to disburse money 
for any service to which it had not been appropriated by 
the representatives of the people, and that the present 
ministers had not the confidence of the parliament. They 
rejected an Indian bill brought in by Pitt, and then attacked 
him for not yielding to the opinion of the commons so 
repeatedly and so clearly expressed, and resigning his office. 
Pitt maintained the propriety of his forbearing to resign, 
when such a resignation would leave the country without 
any government at all. 

Meantime his reputation kept on rising with the people, 
who watched, with interest not unmixed with astonishment, 
the struggle which he was maintaining single-handed against 
such numerous and such formidable antagonists, till the 
general wish began to be, not that he should yield to, but 
rather that he should coalesce with his adversaries. He 
was not unwilling to entertain such a proposal, and the 
king expressed to the duke of Portland a desire that he 
would confer with Pitt on the subject. The prospect of a 
strong administration thus held out, was destroyed by the 
petulant obstinacy of the duke, who insisted that, as a 
preliminary to negotiation, Pitt should submit to the 
declared wish of the house of commons by resigning 
his office. Pitt^with proper spirit, replied that he would 
not march out of his post with a halter round his neck, 
change his armour, and beg to be admitted as a volunteer 
in the army of the enemy, but declared his willingness 
to treat on equal terms. It was soon made apparent, 
however, that Fox and his party would be satisfied with 
no arrangement which did not give them a decided supe¬ 
riority ; and, after a few days, the negotiation was wholly 
broken off. 

Fox meditated a refusal of the supplies; and actually 
succeeded in compelling Pitt to postpone the ordnance 
estimates, though his majority on this question was only 
twelve, being the smallest which had ever mustered on his 
side; and many, even of those who had voted with him, 





lxiii.] "geojrge hi. 699 

soon repented of this vote, which was very ill received by A - D - 
the country, which began to think Fox more solicitous for 17j4 * 
the gratification of his own ambition and resentment than 
for the general welfare. Even that scanty majority he 
found would fail him if he attempted, as he at one time 
contemplated, opposing the usual mutiny bill; at last a long 
address to the king, praying him to remove the ministers, 
was carried only by a majority of one, and he felt it useless 
to protract the contest; Pitt, on his part, saw that the coun¬ 
try was now sufficiently on his side, and, on the 25 th of 
March, the parliament was dissolved. 

In this extraordinary struggle it must be remembered, 
that as the house of lords was favourable to Pitt as well as 
the king, the point contended for by Fox would have made 
the house of commons supreme over both the other portions 
of the legislature. He did not venture to frame any of the 
motions or resolutions, which he carried against Pitt, so 
that the concurrence of the house of lords could be asked to 
them; nor, as the king pointed out in his reply to one of 
the addresses presented to him by the commons, was his 
objection to Pitt as minister based on any offence or error 
which Pitt was alleged to have committed. Moreover, his 
repugnance to a dissolution betrayed a consciousness that 
the people in general were not with him, since, if they had 
been, a new election must have been the most favourable 
event possible for his interests. His warmest advocates 
blame the course which he took on this occasion, as one, 
like his coalition with lord North, only to be justified by 
success; and, like that coalition, condemned by its decided 
failure. 

To this contest we may trace the formation of the modern 
Tory party. Pitt, during the latter years of his administra¬ 
tion, and ever since his death, has been looked upon as a Tory 
minister; but his was not the Toryism of lord Bute and lord 
North: to the latter of whom he was so opposed, that he re¬ 
fused to sit in the same cabinet with him. On the contrary, 
he entered public life as a Whig; and it was only by gradual 
steps that he was forced into a divergence from or modification 
of his original politics, from which he was driven first by the 
violence with which Fox on this occasion exaggerated the 
Whig principle of the supremacy of the commons, in order 
to eject him from office, and (though for a while in the 
debates on the regency, Fox, on the other hand, asserted the 







A.D. 

1784 . 


700 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

most extreme Tory doctrines, and the two champions ap¬ 
peared mutually to have changed places) he was still further 
separated from his original party by their vehement approval 
of the French revolution; and the necessary and continued 
resistance to the principles which they then avowed drove 
him, and still more his successors, further from his original 
line, till at last the two parties seemed hardly to have one 
political principle in common. 

The elections showed the feelings with which the nation 
at large regarded the conduct of the two leaders, by giving 
Pitt so decided a majority as reduced his adversaries to 
complete helplessness, and for a time almost to inaction, and 
gave him the power to carry all his measures unresisted and 
unaltered. He reintroduced the India bill which had been 
rejected at the beginning of the year, extricating the com¬ 
pany from its financial difficulties, and establishing a new 
system of government, nearly the same as that which now 
exists, erecting a board of control to superintend the affairs 
of India conjointly with the directors, giving the governor- 
general supreme power in India, and making him responsible 
to the authorities at home for his judicious exercise of it. 
He applied himself at the same time to putting the finances 
of the kingdom in a better condition: owing partly to 
general mismanagement, and partly to the expenses of the 
war, they had fallen into great disorder; the funds were 
unprecedentedly low, and the yearly revenue fell short of the 
expenditure by no less than two millions of money, while 
smuggling was carried on to such an extent that in some 
articles, such as tea and spirituous liquors, it was estimated 
that three-fifths of the whole consumption of the kingdom 
were imported in that manner. On them he reduced the 
duty so as to render the contraband trade no longer pro¬ 
fitable, while by fresh taxes so equally distributed as to be 
burdensome to no class of the population, he more than made 
up the deficiency of the revenue, and in a short time the 
trade of the country flourished so greatly under his new 
regulations, that he was able to set apart a considerable 
annual sum as a sinking fund to effect the reduction of the 
national debt. Even Eox himself allowed that he deserved 
infinite credit for the courage with which he grappled with 
the difficulties of the exchequer, and he received the cordial 
support of many of those members who had been most 
strongly pledged to oppose him. 









GEORGE III. 


701 


LXIII.] 

In England he continued his exertions in the cause of 
parliamentary reform, bringing in, though unsuccessfully, a 
bill more precise and minute in its details than that which 
had formerly been defeated, which provided for the disfran¬ 
chisement of many decayed boroughs, and established a 
standard according to which other boroughs, in subsequent 
ages, should be considered decayed, and, as such, should be 
disfranchised ; but in Ireland, where the volunteers, gradually 
allowing themselves to be made the tools of artful dema¬ 
gogues, were attempting to overawe the parliament into the 
adoption of a somewhat similar measure, he firmly discoun¬ 
tenanced proceedings so supported; while, at the same time, 
he applied himself to weaken the cry for reform in that 
country, by commercial concessions of great importance, 
placing the Irish commerce and manufactures on an equality 
with those of England, though the bills which he introduced 
with that object, after passing through the English parlia¬ 
ment, were defeated in the Irish house of commons by the 
jealousy or selfishness which actuated a large proportion of 
the Irish politicians. 

He now applied himself to the re-establishment of the 
sinking fund for the reduction of the national debt on a 
more efficient, and also on a more secure footing than that 
on which it had stood in Walpole’s time, since which it had 
been neglected; and the economy which he had introduced 
into the public departments, and the extent to which trade 
had increased under his new commercial regulations, enabled 
him to set apart a million a year for the fund, without 
adding to the burdens of the people; and he conferred 
further benefits on the commerce of the nation by treaties 
with Erance and Spain, factiously opposed by Eox, who 
maintained that Erance and England were natural and 
unalterable enemies; but more justly praised by Eox’s bio¬ 
grapher, as based on sound commercial principles. It would 
exceed the limits of the present work to detail the different 
plans for simplifying the entire system of taxation, which 
this great minister introduced, and which won the cordial 
praise of even his most persevering opponents. No minister 
before him had given a careful study to the principles, of 
political economy, but now Pitt reduced them to practice, 
and won for them the general assent of the community by 
the demonstration of their merits when brought into exten¬ 
sive operation. 


A.D. 

1785 . 





702 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. The only exception to the general spirit of liberality and 
1786— enlightenment which governed all his policy, was the resist- 
1788 * ance which he made to the repeal of the test and corpora¬ 
tion acts, which for forty years longer still held their place 
among our statutes; and his maintenance of which was the 
more singular, as he subsequently appeared not adverse to 
granting to the Roman Catholics the liberty which he now 
denied to the Dissenters. 

During the years 1787 and 1788 the attention of the 
parliament was mainly occupied by matters of a more private 
character. The prince of Wales, whose allowance when he 
came of age in 1783, had been fixed by the king at a lower 
sum than the ministers thought advisable, found himself 
considerably in debt, and, as the king objected to assisting 
him, he made large reductions in his establishment, which he 
placed on a footing suited to a private individual, rather 
than such as was expected from the heir apparent of the 
kingdom. At last, in 1787, the opposition took up the 
question as an engine of annoyance to the government, pro¬ 
posing an address to the king to relieve the prince from his 
embarrassments. Their interference provoked allusions to 
a report that the prince was married to a Roman Catholic 
lady, a Mrs. Fitzherbert; as such a marriage, if duly solem¬ 
nized, would have deprived the prince of his right of suc¬ 
cession to the crown, and of his position as heir apparent, 
which was made the plea for the parliamentary grant intended 
to be proposed. But the prince authorized Fox to deny in the 
most positive manner, that any such marriage had taken 
place in any way whatsoever; though it is now certain that 
the ceremony had been performed by a Protestant clergyman ; 
and that the prince fancied he had escaped from the conse¬ 
quent forfeiture of his right of succession, by the royal 
marriage act, passed a few years before, which made such a 
marriage, without the consent of the reigning sovereign, 
invalid. The denial, however, thus authoritatively made, 
commanded belief at the time, and, in consequence, George 
III. consented to the prince’s debts being paid, though, as 
his income was but slightly augmented, the arrangement 
now made did not prevent him from becoming similarly in¬ 
volved again. 

The same year the house of commons resolved to prefer 
articles of impeachment against Warren Hastings, for some 
of the acts ol his Indian administration. Burke, whose 


LXIII.] GEORGE III. 703 

glowing imagination and ardent humanity was easily excited 
by any tale of cruelty and oppression, had permitted his 
mind to dwell on the severity w T ith which Hastings had 
treated the rajah of Benares, the princesses of Oude, and 
one or two other persons, till he became blind to the great 
benefits which India in general had received from his admi¬ 
nistration, and thought of nothing but punishing him for 
the one or two actions which, however beneficial to his 
masters, the East India Company, were certainly not to be 
• justified on any principles of strict morality or justice. 
Hastings had returned from India in 1785, and the next 
year, Burke and Sheridan, the member for Stafford, already, 
though a young man, widely known as the author of some of 
the best comedies in the English language, began to bring 
the question before the house of commons in speeches 
fraught w r ith a vehement eloquence, which, by the confession 
of all who heard them, has never been surpassed. So 
numerous were the charges which they, supported by the 
whole power of the opposition, brought forward, that they 
could not all be discussed in one session, and the considera¬ 
tion of them was renew r ed this year; when Pitt and Duridas 
assented to the impeachment, not without some incon¬ 
sistency, since Dundas had pronounced some of Hastings’ 
measures the salvation of India; and since on the first article 
on which Pitt voted against him, he rested his opinion not 
on any general principle, but on a paltry question of detail. 
At a later period, Dundas, with singular indiscretion, avowed 
his object to have been to prevent the returned governor 
from being nominated one of the board of control; and, we 
may probably add, to deprive him of any open display of the 
favour of the king, who was known to regard him with high 
approbation. The trial began in the spring of 1788, and 
never had legal justice appeared in a more imposing form. 
The peers of Great Britain were the judges, the commons of 
Great Britain were the accusers, the defendant was one who 
had long been the governor of vast dominions, far more 
extensive than his native land, the greater part of which he 
had himself brought under her sway; the spectators were 
the sovereign of the kingdom with his family, and a nume¬ 
rous company of the noblest and fairest of the land, attracted, 
some by sympathy with the accused, some by admiration of 
the marvellous eloquence already displayed by the managers 
of the impeachment, and by the expectation of similar dis- 


A.D. 

1787 — 

1788 . 









704 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. plays now; nor were they disappointed: again did Burke 
*787 and Sheridan and their colleagues vie with one another, and 
1 ^ 88, with their own previous efforts in-every variety of oratory; 
now pressing their case on the judges with close reasoning, 
now electrifying their audience with impassioned declama¬ 
tion ; at one time painting in glowing colours the sacred 
majesty of justice and humanity, at another, in words that 
burn, denouncing retribution, and invoking vengeance on 
oppression and cruelty, though perpetrated at the furthest 
extremity of the globe, on nations and individuals till then 
unheard of in Europe. It was not till more than seven 
years after Burke opened the case in Westminster Hall 
that the trial was concluded, Hastings being acquitted by a 
large majority on every one of the charges brought against 
him ; while his personal integrity was abundantly proved by 
the fact that, long as he had enjoyed the supreme power in 
a country where, at that time, every one amassed a fortune 
in a few years, his savings were insufficient to defray the 
expenses of the trial, and he was forced to trust to the libe¬ 
rality of the East India Company for defraying those ex¬ 
penses, and for providing him with the means of passing the 
rest of his days in moderate comfort and affluence. 

Pitt’s system was very different from his father’s : his 
whole views were directed to the preservation of peace, as a 
far surer mode of increasing the prosperity of a country 
than augmentations of dominion made by war, and liable 
again to be lost by war; and it was in peace that his talents 
were calculated to shine with the greatest brilliancy : at the 
same time, there was nothing timid or shrinking in his policy. 
On the contrary, one of the means which he took to pre¬ 
serve peace was showing that he was prepared for war, and 
he was the first minister who saw the necessity of fortifying 
our dockyards at home and our most assailable settlements 
abroad; and a great deal of our early success in the next 
war was owing to his well-timed vigilance, exerted when 
many of his opponents saw no necessity for it. And in 
1787 an occasion arose which showed more plainly still his 
resolution not to allow his love of peace to lead him to any 
abandonment of the honour of England. The states of 
Holland had lately risen against the stadtholder, and de¬ 
prived him of his authority. The soldiers had even treated 
his wife, the princess of Orange, who was sister to the king 
of Prussia, with great outrage ; and it became apparent that 


LXIII.] GEORGE III. 705 

they relied on the assistance of the French, who marched an 
army to the frontier, to support them, in the event of the king of 
Prussia taking up arms, as he threatened, to avenge the indig¬ 
nity offered to the princess. Pitt immediately sent an envoy 
to Paris, Mr. William Grenville, afterwards lord Grenville, who 
remonstrated so strongly against the interference of France 
in the affair, announcing that such a step on their part would 
compel England also to interfere, and would perhaps light 
up the flames of war over the whole Continent, that, though 
the Prussian troops overran Holland and re-established the 
stadtholder at the Hague, the French renounced all idea of 
engaging in the quarrel, recalled their troops, and peace was 
preserved; nor must we omit to add, to the honour of Fox 
and his adherents, that they cordially approved of all the 
steps taken in this matter, showing that personal ambition 
and party prejudice were alike forgotten by them when the 
good faith of England to her allies and her just weight in 
the councils of Europe were at stake. 

The year 1788 exhibited the minister, the parliament, and, 
indeed, the people in general in a most honourable light, 
uniting to terminate a great evil, the existence, or at least 
the extent of which had been brought to light only so re¬ 
cently, that they are entitled to the credit of having begun 
to put an end to it as soon as it was revealed. It was 
known that the plantations in the West Indies were culti¬ 
vated by slaves brought from the African coast; but the 
wickedness of the means taken to procure them, and the fear¬ 
ful sufferings to which they were exposed, were wholly unsus¬ 
pected. Fortunately for the interests of humanity, and for 
the glory of England, their wrongs and miseries attracted 
the notice of a most remarkable man, singularly fitted, both 
by nature and circumstances, to be the champion of their 
cause. 

William Wilberforce, whose blameless and useful life was 
continued to the present generation, was now in the prime 
of life ; possessed of ample fortune, of great industry and 
talents for business, and of an eloquence remarkable even at 
a period and in an assembly unrivalled for the number and 
genius of its orators. He had also, though young, become 
deeply imbued with the sentiments of the most earnest re¬ 
ligion, which, teaching him that the continuance of such a 
traffic was not only a disgrace, but a sin, supplied him with 
a motive for insisting on its abolition strong enough to 

z z 


a.d. 

1787 - 

1788. 







706 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. enable him to persevere, in spite of all the discouragements 

HSf?. 0 f delay, defeat, the calumny of enemies, *and the lukewarm¬ 
ness of friends, till after a few years his exertions were 
crowned by complete success in the entire abolition of the 
slave-trade. He now, with the impressive energy of heart¬ 
felt sincerity, laid before the house the way in which it 
exposed the whole African coast to desolation; the princes 
of every petty tribe making war on their neighbours in 
order to procure captives to sell to the slave-merchants, and, 
when that supply failed, kidnapping even their own subjects 
and burning their own villages, to make a profit by the sale 
of the harmless inhabitants, while the sufferings to which 
they were exposed on their voyage from their native land 
were such as to baffle all description, and even all con¬ 
ception. Penned like sheep between decks so low that 
they were unable even to sit up, they were closely packed 
side by side for six weeks, in a tropical climate, barely sus¬ 
tained in life by scanty and unwholesome food, while the 
diseases which hunger and confinement daily engendered 
were so aggravated by dirt, and neglect, and the foul ex¬ 
halations by which they were surrounded, that it was com¬ 
puted that on an average one-half perished before they were 
able to be put to work. Horrors like these needed no elo¬ 
quence to exaggerate them ; and the impression produced 
by the bare recital of them united every generous heart in 
the resolution to put an end to such abominations. Pitt, 
who was connected with Wilberforce by ties of the closest 
intimacy, cordially supported his friend ; Burke, Fox, and 
Sheridan were equally loud and sincere in their denun¬ 
ciations of the evil, and in their expressions of admiration 
for and gratitude to the speaker, who undertook the task of 
grappling with it. Still its suppression could not be accom¬ 
plished in an instant. The owners of the slave-ships at 
Liverpool raised an outcry against any interference with 
what they looked on as a lucrative branch of trade ; many 
of the West Indian planters resisted any measure which 
could have a tendency to diminish the supply of labour; the 
king, always inclined to look upon any innovation on 
established practices as in itself the worst possible of evils, 
was not disposed to favour any sweeping measure. Many, 
even of the sincere friends of the negro, dreaded proceeding 
with too much precipitation, lest such conduct should give 
rise to disturbances, and even to insurrections among the 




LXIII.] 


GEORGE III. 



slaves already in the "West Indies; and for this year Wil- 
berforce was forced to be content with a bill materially 
lessening the horrors of the Middle Passage, as the voyage 
across the Atlantic was called ; and to trust to time for 
enabling him to accomplish his great object of the entire 
abolition of the trade, which he did not succeed in carrying 
till nearly twenty years afterwards. 

In the autumn of the same year the attention of the 
parliament was occupied by an affair of a most novel and 
embarrassing character. The king, after a short illness, 
proved to be entirely deranged, and it was consequently 
necessary to take steps for the appointment of a regency. 
It was evident that the prince of Wales was the person 
whom, as the heir to the throne, it was most natural to 
appoint. It was certain also, that as soon as he was 
appointed he would remove the present ministry, and instal 
Pox and his party in their places. George III. had not 
been an indulgent father to him; and, since he came of 
age, he had identified himself with the opposition, some of 
the leaders of which party, especially Pox and Sheridan, 
w r ere his most intimate personal friends; men by their 
brilliant wit and gaiety eminently fitted to attract the 
notice and rivet the good will of a prince, himself possessed 
of great natural talents, which had been highly cultivated, 
and of a well-bred gaiety of heart, and refinement of man¬ 
ners, which enabled him to appreciate and to enjoy the social 
accomplishments which distinguished the Whig leaders. 
JSTot that in natural wit and liveliness Pitt was inferior to 
his rivals; but be was too fully occupied by the cares of 
office to be able to devote himself to society; and his prin¬ 
ciples were of too rigid a character to allow him to mingle 
freely in the scenes of dissipation in which Pox unfortunately 
too much delighted, and with which the prince was easily 
seduced; and in his character of minister to the father, he 
had been in some degree placed in a situation of antagonism 
to the son. It is possible that the knowledge of the 
prince’s bias may in some degree have affected the view 
which he took of the question under consideration, as it 
certainly prompted Pox to the eager vehemence which he 
displayed. Pitt announced the king’s illness to the house 
of commons, and moved the appointment of a committee to 
searcli for precedents. Pox ridiculed the idea of appointing 
such a committee, on the ground that it was notorious 

z z 2 


A.D. 

1788 — 

1790 . 







708 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. that there were no precedents bearing on the case; assert- 
1788— j n g^ moreover, that the prince of Wales had as inalienable 
a right to the regency, as he would have had to the crown 
in the event of the king’s death. 

“ I’ll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life” was 
Pitt’s exclamation when he heard this strange doctrine so 
broadly asserted by one who had so lately claimed such 
supreme authority for the house of commons ; but, when he 
himself, while properly upholding the claims of parliament 
to decide the matter, proceeded to assert that the prince 
had no more right to the regency than any other individual 
in the kingdom, he pronounced an opinion which, though 
logically correct, was so at variance with the common feeling 
on the subject that he was forced to explain it by stating 
his meaning to be that the prince had no legal right whatever 
till it was conferred on him by the parliament, admitting, at 
the same time, that he agreed that the prince was the fittest 
person in the kingdom to be appointed, and that he had no 
intention of proposing any one else. Accordingly a bill 
was brought in conferring the regency on the prince, with a 
few necessary limitations arising from the vicarious and 
temporary nature of the powers to be conferred; and Pox 
was beginning already to arrange the distribution of the 
different offices in the administration, the formation of 
which was to be entrusted to him, when, on the 19th of 
Pebruary, after the bill had been read a second time in the 
house of lords, it was announced that the king was so far 
recovered as to be able to resume his attention to business, 
and further proceedings were in consequence rendered 
unnecessary. 


CHAPTER LXIY. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

In the summer of the year 1789 the revolution broke out 
in Prance, an event which ultimately caused the greatest 
derangement of Pitt’s policy, but which at first was not 
expected by any one to give rise to war, seeming likely 
rather to strengthen the minister by the division which it 
caused among the opposition ; Pox speaking of it as a most 
glorious achievement, and one which wholly removed his 
former prepossessions against the Prench ; while Burke, 
with more accurate foresight, though he freely admitted the 




GEORGE ITT. 


709 


LXIV.] 

grievances under which the French people had hitherto suf- a.d. 
fered, saw in their present fury nothing but misery to 1 ' 90 ~ 
themselves, and disquiet and distress to the rest of Europe. 1 ' 92 * 

The dangers which threatened the continuance of peace 
seemed to impend from other quarters. Some British mer¬ 
chants having established themselves on the north-west 
coast of America, near Nootka Sound, with the view of 
establishing a trade in furs and other commodities of those 
regions, the Spanish government, under pretence that 
they had thus trespassed on the rights granted to Ferdi¬ 
nand and Isabella by the pope in the fifteenth century, sent 
a small squadron, which demolished the buildings, and car¬ 
ried off the merchants as prisoners to Mexico. Pitt instantly 
demanded reparation for the insult, and the abandonment of 
the claim thus set up so vigorously, that the Spaniards, find¬ 
ing that no aid could be expected from France, submitted to 
all his demands, and consented to the British establishing 
any settlements they wished on either coast of America, to 
the north of the existing possessions of Spain. 

The next danger arose in the opposite corner of Europe. 
Russia, being at war with Turkey, had lately taken the 
strongly fortified towns of Ismail and Oczakov; and Pitt, 
unable by negotiation to procure favourable terms for 
Turkey, suddenly augmented the navy, and delivered a 
message from the king to the house of commons, that this 
additional armament was caused by the possibility of open 
resistance to the encroachments of Russia becoming neces¬ 
sary. The measures, however, taken and announced by the 
ministry, were so vigorously attacked by the opposition in a 
series of motions, in the debates on which Mr. Grey, after¬ 
wards lord Grey, particularly distinguished himself, that 
they were not persevered in, though they perhaps were not 
without effect in inducing Russia to moderate her tone in 
her subsequent negotiations with Turkey. 

As long as it was possible to preserve peace the country, 
under the wise system of finance and commerce now adopted, 
continued to increase in wealth and prosperity with unex¬ 
ampled rapidity. The revenue rose so greatly and so 
steadily that, at the beginning of 1792, Pitt was able to 
take off some of the taxes, even while devoting a larger sum 
to the sinking fund than had ever been contemplated. 

But the French revolution was spreading apprehensions 
throughout Europe that had an unfortunate tendency to 






710 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. realize themselves. The continental sovereigns were easily 

1792 . persuaded that monarchy itself was endangered ; and, in 
the summer of 1792, the duke of Brunswick, as commander 
of the Austrian and Prussian armies, invaded France, having 
first issued a proclamation intended to secure the safety of 
the royal family of France, who were detained in prison in 
Paris; but, in effect, giving their enemies a terrible handle 
to work their destruction, by affording them a pretext for 
representing Louis as leagued with the enemies of their 
country. England alone of the great European powers 
declined to join in such a demonstration of hostility to the 
new French government, though at a later period the 
English ambassador in Paris was directed to express the 
king’s solicitude for the safety of the French royal family, 
and the most cordial sympathy for them was expressed by 
the leaders of both parties in parliament, in the vain hope 
that the knowledge of this general feeling in their favour 
might at least have the effect of saving their lives. 

But, though the government was thus careful of giving 
offence to the French, the people in general were not indif¬ 
ferent to the events that were taking place so near to them, 
or blind to the danger with which those events seemed to 
threaten the peace of Europe. On the contrary, man}' - of 
the leaders of the opposition, preferring their country to 
their party, openly declared that a crisis had arrived at 
which the government must be supported, and showed 
themselves prepared to give a practical effect to their decla¬ 
ration. Burke had already separated himself from the 
admirers of the revolution, breaking off even all private 
friendship with Fox, whom he looked upon as the dissemi¬ 
nator of the most dangerous doctrines; and now the "Whig 
party in general showed a willingness to unite with the 
minister in his resistance to the new-fangled doctrines 
which, it was feared, were. rapidly making proselytes in 
England. Pitt gladly expressed his willingness to accept 
the proffered alliance, and proposals were made to Fox which 
would have placed half the offices in the ministry at his dis¬ 
posal. To the surprise of his friends, Fox was found 
unusually ill-humoured and impracticable. Like lord Chat¬ 
ham in 1766, he disdained the appearance of joining an 
existing ministry; then he was afraid of seeming to be 
acting under Pitt; at last, in consequence of his objections, 
the negotiations were wholly broken off, though so untenable 




LXIV.] GEORGE III. 711 

did they appear to his friends (and no statesman has ever 
had such a number of personal friends, who made their 
attachment to him one of their pliief motives of action), that, 
before the end of the next year, the greater part of them 
formally abandoned him, and became avowed supporters of 
the ministry, in which the duke of Portland, with one or 
two more, accepted important offices. 

Still Pitt hoped to maintain peace. On the king of 
Prance being formally deposed by the national assembly, 
the English ambassador had been recalled from Paris, on 
the ground that the government, to which he had been 
sent, no longer existed ; but he had been ordered, before 
quitting the country, to assure the leading French states¬ 
men of the desire of England to preserve a strict neutrality; 
and the French ambassador remained in London; so that 
Pitt declared, in his place in parliament, that he saw no 
danger of wmr; and, in fact, he was more apprehensive of 
disturbances at home, from a revolutionary and seditious 
spirit, which he believed that the admirers of the new 
French system were endeavouring to excite among the 
English people; some of them, with Mr. Grey at? their 
head, having formed a society to which they gave the name 
of the Friends of the People, which Fox, who defended it, 
though he refused to join it, admitted contained some 
infuriated Bepublicans; but, at the end of 1792, the French, 
getting more violent every day, openly attacked Holland, 
and published a decree, declaring every nation their enemy 
Avhich, rejecting liberty and equality, chose to preserve its 
princes and its privileged orders. Even Fox, who, only 
three days before, was so furious in his opposition to the 
ministers, as to declare that there was no address to the 
king which Pitt could possibly frame, that he would not 
propose an amendment to, and divide the house upon, 
was for a short time somewhat sobered by this extravagant 
declaration of war-against the whole world, and by the inhu¬ 
manity with which the French assembly was treating 
Louis XVI., whom they had now separated from his 
family; but, after a few days, he recurred to his old tactics, 
and, at a public dinner, attended by many of his party, 
gave, as his last toast, the “Majesty of the People.” 

On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis XVI. was beheaded 
in Paris ; and, on the receipt of this intelligence, the English 
ministers ordered the French ambassador to leave London. 


A.D. 

1792 — 

1793 . 






712 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.i>. Letters recalling him had already been despatched from 
Paris, where M. Monge, the minister of marine, had publicly 
’ announced the intention of .making a descent on England, 
and of planting the sacred tree of liberty on the soil of that 
island; and, on the 3rd of Eebruary, the Erench government 
formally declared war against Great Britain. 

The first efforts of Great Britain were neither very 
vigorous, nor very successful. Alliances were formed with 
Austria and Prussia. The parliament cordially supported 
the war, voting large supplies; but the whole force sent 
to the Continent consisted of 20,000 men, which, with 
10,000 Hanoverians, were placed under the command of the 
duke of York, the second son of the king, a young prince 
of great courage, and of the most popular manners, but of 
no experience in war. He landed in the Netherlands in 
the spring of 1793, and joined the main army of the allies ; 
the generalissimo of the whole force being the prince of 
Saxe-Coburg, an officer of very moderate abilities. 

Our space forbids us to enter into the general details of the 
campaign, except where our own countrymen were engaged. 
It was to them that the siege of Valenciennes, one of the 
most important fortresses on the Blemish frontier, was 
committed; and they pressed it with such activity, that the 
town capitulated in a fortnight; but, with great impolicy, 
it was taken possession of for the emperor,—a proceeding 
which gave an idea that the allies entertained a project of 
dismembering Prance, and perhaps of dividing her, as some 
of them had lately divided Poland; and which thus, instead 
of enabling them to take advantage of the divisions existing 
among the Frenchmen of different political parties, united 
them all in defence of their common country. 

Greater importance was attached to the revolt of Toulon, 
the citizens of which great sea-port, terrified at the atrocities 
which the revolutionary party had committed in Lyons and 
Marseilles, revolted, and invited the English fleet, which, 
under lord Hood, was cruising in the gulf of Lyons, to 
come to their assistance. Lord Hood gladly entered the 
harbour. Spain, which was also at war with Prance, fur¬ 
nished a garrison of land forces; and the commanders of 
the two countries took possession of the town in the name 
of Louis XVII. 

The news of this event produced great exultation in 
England, where the ministers looked upon it as an indica- 




GEORGE III. 


713 


LXIV.] 

tion of the general feeling of France, which was decisive of 
the ultimate issue of the war; but it produced only dis¬ 
appointment. The French government instantly besieged 
Toulon with an army, which, chiefly in consequence of the 
genius displayed by the commander of the artillery, Napoleon 
Buonaparte, then only twenty-four years of age, proved irre¬ 
sistible ; and, before the end of the year, the allies were forced 
to evacuate the town, having first destroyed a magnificent 
French fleet which was in the harbour, and having taken 
the citizens who were most compromised by the revolt on 
board the English squadron. 

The measures necessary to be taken for the continuance 
of the war, at the beginning of the next year, gave rise to 
warm debates in the house of commons, remarkable chiefly 
for the mistaken prophecies in which both parties indulged. 
The ministers urged that France was so nearly exhausted 
by her efforts in the last campaign, that the continuance of 
our exertions for a short period more must- complete her 
subjugation. The opposition, equally believing in the weak¬ 
ness of France, argued that, as she could not possibly carry 
out, or even entertain any views of aggrandizement, we 
might feel perfectly secured against all danger, without 
distressing ourselves, and burdening our posterity for allies, 
of whom Austria was only desirous to make us a tool for 
the furtherance of her own objects, and Prussia was 
watching for the first opportunity to desert us. The par¬ 
liament, however, agreed with the ministers, and granted 
unprecedented supplies both of men and money. 

On the Continent no advantage of any moment was 
gained. The English troops distinguished themselves highly 
in an action under the walls of Landrecy, but shared in the 
defeat of Turcoing, where the duke of York himself was 
only saved from being taken prisoner by the speed of his 
horse. Throughout the whole campaign the French generals 
Pichegru, Souham, Jourdan, and Moreau, (the two last 
of whom subsequently attained the highest military reputa¬ 
tion,) displayed a superiority of skill, which produced great 
disasters to the allies. The duke of York was forced to 
retire from the French frontier towards Holland, and, being 
gradually driven further back by the overpowering numbers 
of the enemy, in the winter returned to England. 

But where England could carry on the war without 
being encumbered by her allies, she had very different 


A.P. 

1704 — 

1795. 






714 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. success. In the West Indies a military and naval force, 
— under admiral sir John Jervis and general sir Charles 
17Jo. Grey, reduced all the islands belonging to the French. In 
the Mediterranean admiral Hotham defeated a fleet con¬ 
siderably superior in numbers to his own; and on the 
western coast of France, on the 1st of June, lord Howe 
gained a complete victory over a splendid fleet, commanded 
by Yillaret Joyeuse, an officer of high reputation, taking 
six ships of the line, and rendering the rest almost incapable 
of any future service. 

This victory encouraged the government to make greater 
efforts than ever. Prussia had openly declared its intention 
* to quit the confederacy, and Austria was known to be 
secretly cherishing the same designs ; nor could Pitt prevail 
on her to continue the war without granting her a subsidy 
of 6,000,000Z., a measure which again roused the opposi¬ 
tion to the most vigorous resistance, but which was sanc¬ 
tioned by a large majority in parliament. Negotiations 
were also entered into with Russia, the ruler of which 
country, the empress Catharine, saw the progress of the 
French with great uneasiness, and now concluded a treaty 
with Great Britain and Austria, though without contributing 
any accession of strength to the objects of the alliance. 

The campaign of 1795 greatly resembled that of the 
preceding year. By land our efforts were productive of 
no advantage; in fact, our chief enterprise, the assistance 
of a body of emigrants, who landed in Quiberon Bay, on 
the coast of the province of La Vendee, only caused great 
calamities to the heroic Vendeans, who were thus encou¬ 
raged to a premature insurrection, and easily crushed by 
Hoche, the ablest military leader who had as yet appeared 
in the French armies; but again our fleets rode triumphant 
over the seas, and the French received from lord Bridport 
a second defeat, which, though not as decisive as that of the 
1st of June, was sufficient to show them the hopelessness of 
attempting to cope with the British on their own element, 
and to confine them to their own harbours for the remainder 
of the year. 

While affairs were proceeding in this manner abroad, at 
home the ministry gained strength by some occurrences, and 
lost it by others. They gained strength by the open acces¬ 
sion to their ranks of some of the leaders of the Whig party, 
who now finally separated from Fox; the duke of Portland, 




LXIV.] GEORGE III. 715 

lord Fitzwilliam, lord Spencer, and Mr. Wyndham becoming 
members of tbe cabinet, in the spring of 1794. But they 
lost strength, though in an inferior degree, by some impolitic 
prosecutions. The belief in the existence of secret seditious 
societies had induced both houses of parliament to suspend 
the habeas corpus act, and to pass stringent laws against 
the existence of such bodies, and treasonable designs were 
proved against a society established in Edinburgh, where two 
men, named Watts and Donnie, were convicted of a plot to 
effect an armed rising, and executed. But in England it 
was not imputed to these societies that they had made any 
preparation for carrying out their designs by force; never¬ 
theless, it was determined to prosecute the leaders, Hardy, 
Horne Tooke, Thelwall, and others, not for a seditious misde¬ 
meanour, of which they might probably have been convicted, 
but for high treason, in compassing the death of the king, 
a charge wholly unsupported by evidence. Mr. Erskine, one 
of the most celebrated pleaders who had ever adorned the 
English bar, obtained great credit by the skill and eloquence 
with which he conducted their defence; but his genius was 
not needed to ensure their acquittal, which certainly damaged 
the ministers, as political prosecutions on manifestly insuffi¬ 
cient grounds ought to do. 

Every year the necessity of applying to parliament for 
supplies for the war produced the same result, a debate 
carried on with the most admirable ability by both parties, 
and the success of the minister in all his proposals. In 
Europe no engagements between the French and English 
took place in 1796; but in the East Indies, and at 
the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch, who had now been 
compelled to become allies of the French, were deprived of 
their most valuable settlements. But in the mean time 
France herself had met with great success against the 
Austrians on the Rhine, and had detached the Spaniards 
from the English alliance, by which step she gained a valu¬ 
able reinforcement for her fleet, and the consideration of the 
whole state of affairs at home and abroad determined Pitt, 
who was always desirous of peace, to open a negotiation for 
that object with the French government. England has often 
been accused of losing as much by her inferiority in diplo¬ 
macy as she gained in war; but at this time an English 
nobleman, lord Malmesbury, was one of the ablest diploma- 


A.D. 

1795 — 

1796 . 




A.D. 

1706 — 

1707 . 


716 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

tists in Europe, and he was now sent to Paris with full 
powers. The terms which he was authorized to offer were 
very honourable to his country. She alone of the allies had 
lost nothing, and had made large acquisitions; but she now 
offered to restore all her conquests, in order to procure a 
similar restitution to her allies on the part of Prance. It 
was soon apparent, however, that the French were deter¬ 
mined to continue the war, though they protracted the 
negotiations as long as possible, and tried to throw the blame 
of their failure upon us; but, as lord Malmesbury’s admi¬ 
rable temper and address gave them no opportunity of so 
doing, they at last, deriving additional courage from Buona¬ 
parte’s brilliant campaign in the north of Italy, broke off the 
negotiation abruptly, and desired lord Malmesbury to leave 
Paris. 

The failure of these negotiations was a great disappoint¬ 
ment to Pitt, whose commercial system, to which he had 
deservedly trusted so much, was wholly deranged by the 
war, and who now saw himself surrounded with embarrass¬ 
ments arising from the vast increase of the national debt, 
and from the.great drain on the resources of the country, 
which had been caused by the subsidies granted to foreign 
powers. The funds had fallen alarmingly, and for a moment 
many of those best acquainted with monetary affairs appre¬ 
hended a national bankruptcy; which was only avoided by 
Pitt’s issuing an order in council, relieving the Bank of 
England by suspending cash payments, and, though the 
policy of such an order was vehemently attacked by the 
opposition, it was approved of by a great majority in parlia¬ 
ment, and maintained for upwards of twenty years. 

These embarrassments of the government inevitably caused 
great distress among the people, and distress produced dis¬ 
content and disturbance; to allay which, the opposition, led 
in this instance by Mr. Grey, brought forward a motion for 
a large measure of parliamentary reform, in some respects 
resembling that proposed by Pitt a few years before; but 
they were defeated, Pitt himself resisting the bill on the 
ground that a measure which might have been safe in times 
of tranquillity was fraught wdth danger in such a crisis as 
then existed, when men’s minds were so violently agitated 
by the recent occurrences in France, and by the difficulties 
at home. And the supplies which Pitt required for the 



GEORGE III. 


717 


LXIV.] 

conduct of the war were cheerfully granted, though exceeding a.d. 
40,000,000?., an amount far beyond any sum that had ever H 97 - 
yet been expended in a single year. 

But the nation was reconciled to these vast demands on 
its resources by two great naval victories. The Spaniards, 
being now in alliance with France, at the beginning of 1797 
sent out a splendid fleet of thirty-nine sail, designed to 
unite with the French, who were awaiting them at Brest, 
and to sweep the Channel of every British vessel. Sir John 
Jervis, who commanded the British fleet off Lisbon, had 
only twenty-one ships ; but, on hearing of the enemy being 
at sea, he instantly sailed in pursuit of them, completely 
defeated them, took four of their largest ships, and compelled 
the rest to retire to Cadiz, and to abandon all hope of any 
junction with their new allies. 

In the autumn the Dutch made a similar attempt, with 
even worse success. They, too, sent forth a fleet from the Texel 
to join the Brest squadron; but were encountered by admi¬ 
ral Duncan, with equal numbers, and were totally defeated, . 
with the loss of more than half their ships. Yet the very 
force which gained these triumphs for England proved, in 
the very same year, in a most dangerous state of disaffection. 

Since the time of James II. the navy had never been the 
favourite service, and the sailors had been greatly neglected. 
Though money had greatly altered in value, their pay had 
never been raised, and was now wholly unequal to their 
barest necessities ; their provisions were bad and insufficient 
in quantity, and many other serious grievances gave them just 
grounds of complaint; while the secret societies, which had 
of late been in fashion, taught them the method of organiza¬ 
tion to procure relief. Their plans were completely matured 
without the slightest suspicion of them being entertained 
by their officers; and, in the middle of April, the fleet at 
Spithead broke into open mutiny. The government behaved 
with generous prudence; they sent the first lord of the 
admiralty, lord Spencer, and lord Howe, the officer in whom 
the sailors had the greatest confidence, down to Portsmouth 
to investigate their complaints. Their justice was admitted, 
and they were at once redressed; but a second mutiny 
immediately afterwards broke out in the fleet at the Nore, 
when the ringleaders, though they had no longer any sub¬ 
stantial hardships to complain of, committed the most law¬ 
less acts, even murdering some of their officers, and showed 






718 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[cir. 

a.d. that the mainspring of their conduct was a deep-seated revo- 

1797. lutionary spirit. Mild measures were no longer suited to 
such a state of affairs. The ministry behaved with great 
resolution, and were admirably supported by the opposition, 
who disdained to make a party question of the safety of the 
country. A severe act of parliament was passed, and pre¬ 
parations were made to suppress the mutiny by force. 
Happily, however, force proved unnecessary: the mutineers, 
finding that instead of awakening the sympathy, they had 
only excited the indignation of their countrymen, became 
discouraged, and dismay begat repentance ; and this for¬ 
midable conspiracy fell to pieces of itself. The ringleaders 
of this second mutiny, the chief of whom was a man named 
Parker, were executed, and in little more than a fortnight 
from the first appearance of disturbance, discipline was 
restored ; and then, with a wise justice, the whole system of 
the navy was carefully revised, in order that all grounds for 
discontent in future might be for ever removed. 

In the summer the Austrians were forced to agree to an 
armistice with the French, which resulted in the treaty of 
Campo Formio; and as this event released us from the 
necessity of consulting the interests of our ally, Pitt made a 
fresh attempt to procure peace, and conferences were opened 
at Lisle, to which town lord Malmesbury was again sent as 
the English plenipotentiary. He was empowered to make 
large cessions of our conquests in the West Indies, and would 
probably have been allowed to gratify the French pride by 
the abandonment by the British sovereign of the title of 
king of France, which had been borne by all the English 
monarchs since Edward III., when in September the existing 
government in France was again overturned, and the violent 
Jacobins, recovering power, broke off the negotiations, and 
prepared to carry on the war, with the avowed intention of 
continuing it till they had reduced England to complete 
subjection. 

The great statesman, who had from the first predicted 
the increasing violence of the French revolution, was not 
spared to witness this further fulfilment of his prophecies. 
On the 9th of July Burke died, leaving a reputation that 
has been constantly rising since his death, as was foreseen 
by Canning, who, in announcing the event to one of his 
friends, declared, “ He is the man that will mark this age, 
marked as it is in itself by events, to all time.” That his 



GEORGE III. 


719 


LXIV.] 

judgment was always correct, that it was not at times too a.d. 
much under the dominion of his feelings, cannot be asserted. 1 ' ! »7 — 
The ground on which he maintained the justice of the war 1 ^ 88 ' 
against France, namely, the murder of king Louis, was 
clearly incorrect, and Pitt’s views were more sound, that we 
had no right to interfere with the internal government of 
France, and that our only justifiable object in the war was 
the protection of ourselves from French aggression. But, 
with the exceptions of his thus putting our conduct in this 
respect on a wrong footing, and of the violence with which 
he led the outcry against Hastings, there is probably no 
practical error to be alleged against any part of his political 
conduct, while the beneficent virtue of his general career 
was so untiring that he was able to boast with truth, that a 
pension, conferred on him a year or two before his death, 
had been earned by his having had an active, though not 
always an ostentatious share in every one act, without ex¬ 
ception, of undisputed constitutional utility in his time. 

Of his eloquence we have already spoken; we have recorded 
the steadiness with which it was at all times employed in 
the defence of liberty, whether claimed on the eastern or 
western shores of the Atlantic; but his speeches must 
themselves be studied before any idea can be formed of the 
wonderful treasures which they contain, of the poetical 
imagination that inspired them, of the profuse fancy and 
variety which adorned them, of the profound learning that 
illustrated them, and, at the same time, of the cautious, 
moderate, sure-footed wisdom which pervaded every part of 
them, tempering his more showy gifts and keeping them 
under the strict control of reason and experience. We may 
add to this union of rare excellences the most spotless in¬ 
tegrity, the most entire disinterestedness, and the most sin¬ 
cere humility in judging of his own claims; and then we 
may surely assert that, in spite of one or two slight errors 
of judgment, his whole career presents to us an union of 
civil wisdom, virtue, and genius, of which the w'orld has hardly 
furnished an equally admirable example. 

The reiterated rejection of his offers of peace caused Pitt 
now to look upon the war as likely to be of long duration, 
and, consequently, as one, the supplies for which ought to 
be derived from sources different from those to which he 
had hitherto trusted. In accordance with these views he 
now greatly diminished the sum to be raised by loans, and 







A.D. 

1798 . 


720 * HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

augmented the taxes for the current year; and, at the same 
time, desirous to avoid, as far as possible, the augmentation 
of the regular army, he encouraged the raising of volunteer 
corps in every part of the kingdom, and his call was responded 
to with an eager patriotism which must have surprised those 
enemies who trusted greatly for ultimate success to a spirit 
of discontent, which was indeed loudly proclaimed by a few 
insignificant agitators, but which they mistook for a general 
disaffection pervading the whole mass of the people. In a 
few weeks 150,000 volunteers had enrolled themselves in 
different corps; in less than a year that number was 
doubled, and the whole island presented a scene of military 
enthusiasm, strongly at variance with its usual orderly 
habits. 

But the fame of England was not yet to be won on land. 
The volunteers were only intended to defend the country in 
case of invasion; and, having now no allies, there was no 
opening for the employment of our armies on the Continent. 
But on the mountain waves our march became more and 
more irresistible. The French government indeed was most 
anxious to invade England, and a vast army of 150,000 men 
was collected on the coast of Picardy, the command of 
which was offered to Buonaparte; but as his sound military 
judgment pronounced success desperate, he persuaded his 
employers rather to send an expedition against Egypt, and, at 
the beginning of the summer, he left Toulon at the head of 
40,000 men, convoyed by a magnificent fleet, and sailed for 
Alexandria. On his way he took possession of Malta, 
which the knights, to whom it belonged, had agreed to sur¬ 
render. At the beginning of July he reached the mouths of 
the Nile, and at once marched into the interior of the country, 
while Brueys, the French admiral, took up a strong position 
with his fleet in the Bay of Aboukir; for he knew that an 
English squadron was in pursuit of him, though he could 
not yet be aware of the genius of its commander. 

About the same time that Buonaparte had arrived at 
Toulon, sir John Jervis, who had been made earl St. Vincent 
in honour of his victory, and who was still in command off 
Cadiz, had detached admiral Nelson with a considerable 
squadron to the Mediterranean. Nelson was almost the 
junior admiral in the service; but even before he had arrived 
at that rank he had achieved a very high reputation. He 
had performed important services in the West Indies. The 





















GEORGE I IT. 


721 


LXIY.] 

victory gained by Hotham, in 1794, had been almost wholly 
owing to his courage and conduct; he had borne the 
brunt of the battle of St. Vincent, directing one of the most 
important operations with intuitive sagacity, and taking 
himself two out of the four vessels which were the prizes of 
that day; and he was now, in independent command, about 
to outdo all the exploits of former commanders, glorious as 
so many of them had been. He had pursued the enemy 
with the greatest promptitude, outstripped them, and reached 
Alexandria before them; passed almost close to them in a 
fog, which saved their army ; then, obtaining fresh intelli¬ 
gence, he again returned to Alexandria, and, on the 1st of 
August, to his delight, found the bay glistening with the 
white sails and waving pennants of the French fleet. The 
Bay of Aboukir was small; the entrance was narrowed bv 
dangerous shoals ; Brueys had made a skilful use of these 
natural advantages, and many of his officers pronounced his 
position unassailable. The ships of the line were equal on 
both sides, but the English vessels were all seventy-fours, 
while the French flag-ship, L’Orient, carried 120 guns. The 
French, too, had several frigates; the English had only 
one: and there were also some formidable batteries on the 
shore which commanded the entrance to the harbour. But 
no difficulties could daunt Nelson, who, though it w r as late 
in the day before his leading ships could reach the narrow 
channels where the enemy lay, at once proceeded to attack 
them, and, sending some of his ships between them and the 
land, and the rest outside of them, so as to place the greater 
part of their fleet between two fires, ensured the victory 
before a single blow was struck. It was nearly dark when 
the battle commenced, and the ceaseless roar and flash of 
the artillery were rendered more awful by the surrounding 
gloom, when that gloom was dispelled by a blaze that lighted 
up the whole bay, and it was seen that the L’Orient was on 

I fire. About ten o’clock she blew up. Awe-struck at the 
explosion, both fleets for a few minutes desisted from their 
exertions, and a dead silence reigned over the waters, only 
broken by the splash of falling fragments of the wreck, by 
the cries of the wounded, and of those who, unhurt by the 
explosion* w^ere struggling for their lives amid the waves, 
and by the shouts of the English sailors, w T ho, forgetful of 
their enmity, were striving to save them. The conflict was 
soon renewed, but gradually died away as the French ceased 

3 A 


A.D, 

1798 . 






722 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 


A.D. 

1796 — 

1708. 


$ 


to resist. When the day broke it was found that, except 
two French ships which were hastening to escape, the whole 
of the enemy’s fleet was in the power of the English. Those 
ships were subsequently taken, and of the whole armament 
only one frigate ever returned to French harbours. 

But while thus triumphant abroad, England had been in 
great danger at home. The Irish had been for some years 
in a most disturbed state, and the rashness of lord Fitz- 
william, who, in 1795, had been sent to Dublin as lord-lieu¬ 
tenant, and who had held them out hopes which he knew to 
be at variance with the intentions of the English cabinet, 
had added feelings of disappointment and exasperation to 
their previous discontent. He had encouraged them to look 
for immediate measures of parliamentary reform and relief 
to the Homan Catholics, to which Pitt was not on principle 
adverse, but which he thought it impossible to grant with 
safety at such a period; and the recal of lord Fitzwilliam, 
which was thus rendered necessary by his own conduct, was 
represented by artful demagogues to the Irish people in 
general as an open defiance of their just claims. The secret 
society of United Irishmen, which had been for some time 
in existence, became greatly augmented in numbers, and 
began to entertain the boldest designs of effecting the sepa¬ 
ration of their country from England, and for this purpose 
they did not scruple to enter into communication with the 
French government. The most celebrated of their leaders 
was lord Edward Fitzgerald, the fifth son of the duke of 
Leinster, a brave soldier, and a most amiable and worthy 
man in private life, but so deeply imbued with admira¬ 
tion for the principles of the French revolution, that, at a 
public dinner in Paris in the winter of 1792, when the 
French were just preparing to crown their atrocities by the 
murder of their unoffending sovereign, he publicly renounced 
his rank, called himself citizen Edward Fitzgerald, and 
selected as his chosen friend the infamous Thomas Paine. 
He was probably further confirmed in the unfortunate line 
of politics which he had adopted by his marriage with the 
natural daughter of the duke of Orleans; and, in 1796, he 
proceeded to the Continent to arrange with French agents 
the details of an immediate invasion of Ireland. The 
French government entered eagerly into the plan ; and, 
in the autumn, a powerful fleet sailed from Brest, having 
on board general Hoche and 25,000 men. Happily for 


; 

j 


I 










GEORGE III. 


723 


LXV.] 


England the weather was so stormy that the expedition 
could not land. One or two ships were wrecked, one or 
two were taken by the English cruisers, and the rest re¬ 
turned unsuccessful and dispirited to their harbours. Still 
the idea was not laid aside by the Irish, though the 
naval defeats which the French and their allies received in 
1797 disabled them from preparing any armament on a 
similar scale. The Irish themselves, however, had organized 
their strength so energetically that, at the beginning of 
1798, their leaders reckoned that they had nearly 300,000 
men ready to take arms in insurrection against the English 
government, and were holding daily meetings and uninter¬ 
rupted communication with French agents, when their 
designs and place of meeting were betrayed to the authori¬ 
ties. Most of the chief leaders w r ere arrested, and their 
papers were seized. Lord Edward himself escaped for 
a while, but was shortly afterwards taken, though the resist¬ 
ance he made was most desperate. He killed one of his 
assailants, and was wounded himself. The wound was not 
necessarily fatal, but, fortunately for himself, the agitation 
of his mind rendered it so, and he died before he could be 
brought to trial. His death and the seizure of his chief 
colleagues did not, however, prevent the outbreak of the 
rebellion, though it hindered it from being formidable. 
Fifteen thousand men did indeed venture on encountering 
the regular troops, sent against them by the government, 
on Vinegar Hill, near Wexford; but they were easily 
routed. A small French force landed at Killala, in Mayo, 
but was soon compelled to surrender; and a large expedi¬ 
tion fell in with a squadron under sir John Warren, and was 
captured, only two frigates escaping in safety to their own 
ports. A few of the ringleaders of the whole conspiracy 
were executed, but the rest of those implicated were treated 
with lenity, and the English government began to apply 
itself to the prevention of the recurrence of similar dangers 
in future by a more complete union of the two kingdoms. 


CHAPTER LXV. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

The battle of the Nile encouraged Austria to renew the 
struggle against France; and Russia also concluded an 

3 a 2 


A.D. 

1798— 

1799. 





724 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[cii. 

A.t». alliance with Great Britain, by the terms of which she 

17 !) 9 . engaged to furnish a large army, to act in conjunction with 
the British forces; but the hopes thus engendered led, in 
the end, to no satisfactory results. At first the French, 
deprived of the presence of Buonaparte, who was unable 
to return to Europe, met with serious disasters. Nelson, 
with his victorious fleet, re-established the king of Naples 
in his dominions 8 , and blockaded Malta so closely, that 
that most important island fortress, cut off from all pos¬ 
sibility of relief, was at last forced to surrender; and a 
strong expedition, sent from England to Holland, took the 
entire Dutch fleet without resistance, and gained one or 
two advantages over the French forces in that country; 
but the duke of York, the British commander-in-chief, a 
second time proved inferior in skill to the French generals, 
and was at last forced to purchase a safe retreat by the 
restoration of all his prisoners. Nor, though at first the 
Austrians and Russians gained some important advantages 
in the north of Italy, was it long before they began to 
quarrel with each other; and the Russians, abandoning the 
campaign, left the Austrians exposed to the whole weight of 
the French armies in the ensuing year. 

Before the end of the year, however, Buonaparte had 
found means to return to France; and a fresh revolution 
in that distracted countrv had established the consular 
government, in which he was raised to the office of first 
consul. His first step was to write a letter to George III., 
to propose peace; but Lord Grenville, to whom, as secre¬ 
tary for foreign affairs, the duty of answering the letter 

8 At the time Nelson was unjustly attacked for annulling a capitulation 
which one of his officers had signed without authority, and for the support 
which he afforded the king of Naples in inflicting capital punishment on the 
chief rebels, and these attacks were countenanced by Southey in his exquisite 
life of him; but Southey, who at that time entertained opinions of extreme 
republicanism, was misled by the report of a worthless woman, a Miss Wil¬ 
liams; and Nelson’s entire innocence of any act of even undue severity has 
lately been amply shown by the authentic documents published by sir Harris 
Nicolas, in the Nelson Despatches. Even at the time lord Spencer, first lord 
of the admiralty, and a man of extreme moderation, pronounced “ that the 
intentions and motives by which all his (Nelson’s) measures had been governed, 
had been as good and pure as their success had been complete;” and with 
respect to the case most strongly insisted on, that of Caraccioli, (who, however, 
was notoriously not included in the capitulation,) he was clearly convicted of 
the most flagrant acts of high treason, having commanded the republican gun-, 
boats which fired on a ship bearing the colours of his law'ful sovereign; nor did* 
he himself pretend to think that he had any right to pardon, but only solicited 
mercy on the ground of his previous services. 





GEORGE III. 


725 


LXV.] 


belonged, refused to treat. The real reasons which a.d. 
actuated the ministry were probably those subsequently GW— 
alleged in the debates which took place on the subject, 1800 ' 
namely, the unaltered spirit of aggression which animated 
the Trench, and the impossibility of placing any confi¬ 
dence in a nation which had established such a number 
of different governments in a few years as Trance. A still 
better justification of it did really exist, if we may trust 
the memoirs of the duchesse d’Abrantes, in Buonaparte’s 
insincerity, as proved by his own declaration that he 
wished Pitt to refuse his offers, since he himself had need 
of war to enable him to reach the highest destinies; but 
even those who approved of the rejection of the Trench 
overtures, condemned the arrogant tone of lord Grenville’s 
letter, and the want of policy and prudence which led him 
to base that refusal in ever so slight a degree on the delay 
of the Trench to restore their ancient line of princes. 

Austria, deprived of the aid of Bussia in the north of 
Italy, and defeated at Marengo, was forced again to make 
peace with Trance on harder terms than before; and 
Buonaparte thought that the subjugation of that power, 

(for the treaty of Luneville was not far from an admission 
of subjugation,) and the ill will engendered between England 
and Bussia by the Dutch expedition, gave him an oppor¬ 
tunity of forming a league against England, founded on the 
maritime laws acknowledged by all nations, but which no 
other people had an equal interest in enforcing. 

The general maritime law of Europe, which was founded 
on common sense, forbade the vessels belonging to neutral 
powers to supply nations engaged in hostilities with supplies 
“ contraband of war,” as the phrase went; but the principle 
which had been contended for of late years by the Baltic 
powers was that any vessel belonging to a neutral kingdom 
had a right to carry goods of all kinds wherever it chose, 
without being subjected to examination by any belligerent 
power, even if believed or known to be employed in sup¬ 
plying military stores to its enemy. Bussia, however, by a 
treaty with Great Britain, made in 1793, had abandoned 
these principles; but now she, Denmark, Sweden, and 
Prussia were persuaded by Buonaparte to unite in a con¬ 
federacy to reassert them; and when, in the autumn of 
1800, the British cabinet sent a strong squadron with a 
special ambassador to Copenhagen to expostulate, the Bus- 








726 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

^; D - sian emperor, Paul, who was subject to frequent fits of 

lo01 ’ insanity, seized all the British vessels, in number above 
300, which were in the Bussian harbours, and threw the 
crews into prison. Pitt at once retaliated by laying an 
embargo on all vessels belonging to the members of the 
confederacy; and he was preparing to take more active 
measures, when he suddenly and unexpectedly found himself 
compelled to resign the government. 

He had just carried the great measure of the legislative 
union between this island and Ireland, in spite of the most 
strenuous opposition from the Irish people, many of whose 
representatives were believed to have been bribed to support 
it, while many more were undoubtedly won over by the 
expectation which Pitt had held out to them, that it would 
be immediately followed by the removal of all political 
disabilities from the Homan Catholics. Pie was quite aware 
that the king w r as very averse to such a proceeding. Some 
years before George III. had conceived the idea that the 
terms of his coronation oath precluded him from giving his 
consent to any relaxation of the laws against the Homan 
Catholics, and had consulted lord Kenyon, the chief justice, 
and the attorney-general, sir John Scott, afterwards lord 
Eldon, on the point, who both advised him that the terms 
of the oath did not prevent him from sanctioning any mea¬ 
sure approved of bv his parliament. Indeed, common sense 
could have come to no other conclusion ; for how could the 
parliament of 1689, or any other parliament, have the power 
to bind their successors for all time ? However, the chan¬ 
cellor, lord Loughborough, took a different view of the 
question, which he urged upon his majesty so strongly, 
that all idea of relaxing the existing laws was laid aside 
for the time. But now Pitt thought that the case was 
altered by the passing of the union, and he again proposed 
it to the king as a measure which he was bound in honour 
to bring forward, as having gained the support of the Irish 
Homan Catholics for the union by a promise to that effect. 
George III. at once pronounced against it as a Jacobinical 
measure, and declaring that he would rather beg his bread 
from door to door than consent to it, accepted Pitt’s re¬ 
signation, and a new ministry was formed; Mr. Addington, 
the speaker, an unpretending man of very ordinary abilities, 
becoming the prime minister, and lord Hawkesbury, after¬ 
wards lord Liverpool, secretary of state for foreign affairs; 




GEORGE IJI. 


727 


LXV.] 

while lord Loughborough, to whose intrigues the change 
in the government was principally owing, was, to his great 
astonishment and disappointment, deprived of the great 
seal, which was given to lord Eldon. 

The change in the ministry, however, did not interrupt 
the preparations for quelling the northern confederacy; 
and at the beginning of March a formidable fleet sailed for 
the Baltic, under sir Hyde Parker, an officer of no par¬ 
ticular distinction, with Nelson under him, as second in 
command. The public was surprised and indignant at his 
subordinate position; but, fortunately for the honour of 
England, sir Hyde had a more accurate idea of his own 
and Nelson’s respective merits than the ministers, and left 
the whole management of the campaign to the victor of 
the Nile. On the 30th of March the British fleet forced 
the passage of the Sound, and arrived off Copenhagen, the 
capital of Denmark, which the Danes had of late been 
indefatigable in strengthening with additional fortifications, 
while a powerful fleet protected the entrance to the harbour, 
the approach to which, even if undefended, was at all times 
difficult, from the narrowness of the channel and the 
number and intricacy of the shoals. Neither shoals nor 
batteries, however, could save the Danes from the genius 
of Nelson. It was in vain that they removed the buoys. 
He, in person, superintended the taking of fresh soundings, 
and then led the main division of the fleet to instant 
attack. Nothing could exceed the formidable character of 
the defences to be assailed, nor the gallantry of the de¬ 
fenders. Every point of the shore, and every one of the 
small islets which stud the channel, bristled with heavy 
batteries, garrisoned with upwards of 20,000 troops, which 
opened a ceaseless fire on the British ships the moment 
that they arrived within reach of their shot. Nelson had 
only twelve ships of the line, and a small squadron of 
frigates; but his arrangements had been so skilfully made, 
that, though three of his ships grounded on their way, he 
could still attack every assailable point; and, early on the 
2nd of April, his ships advanced to the positions which he 
had assigned them, and began the battle. Eor above three 
hours the Danes maintained an unwavering defence, though 
the superior skill with w’hich our artillery was served was 
gradually deciding the contest. At last one of the largest 
of the enemy’s ships blew up; others were so shattered as 


A.D. 

1801. 




728 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

ad. to be compelled to strike their colours; and in a short 

1801. time more the whole of the Danish fleet and of their large 
floating batteries were either captured or destroyed, and 
most of the land defences were so greatly injured as to he 
• incapable of protracting the contest with any hope of 
success. With a humanity as signal as his courage, Nelson, 
the moment that the victory was secured, offered terms to 
the conquered foe. They were gratefully accepted. An 
armistice was at once agreed upon; news arrived shortly 
afterwards of the emperor of Russia haviug been murdered 
at St. Petersburg; his son Alexander, being eager to 
re-establish the alliance with England, shortly after his 
accession, signed a treaty with the English ambassador, 
renouncing the system to which England had objected ; and 
his example was followed by the other members of the 
confederacy, to the great indignation of Buonaparte, who 
pronounce* their conduct to be an admission of the British 
sovereignty over the seas and of their own slavery. 

At the same time the French were meeting with defeat 
equally signal in the East. After Buonaparte quitted Egypt, 
Kleber for some time commanded in that country with 
great ability and success; but he was assassinated, and his 
successor, Menou, proved unequal to so difficult a charge. 
The Turkish army continued a desultory but pertinacious 
resistance to the French arms; and, at the end of the year 
1800, the British government sent a force of 10,000 men, 
under sir Ralph Abercromby, to Egypt to co-operate with 
them; while the marquis of Wellesley, who was governing 
India with great energy and capacity, prepared a force to 
sail from Bombay, and to land at the end of the Red Sea, in 
order to join their countrymen in the Delta, and thus to 
form a combined force equal to the entire French army. 
At the beginning of March Abercromby landed in Aboukir 
Bay, and after one or two skirmishes encountered the 
French in a pitched battle in the neighbourhood of the 
great city of Alexandria. The French were beaten at every 
point, and compelled to retreat; and, though Abercromby 
himself was mortally wounded, general Hutchinson, who 
succeeded to the command, followed up the advantages 
which he had gained with equal vigour, defeating general 
Belliard at Cairo, and compelling him to capitulate on con¬ 
dition of being allowed to retire to France ; then blockading 
Menou in Alexandria, and forcing him to submit to similar 












LXY.] GEORGE III. 729 

conditions, till by September, 1801, there was not a single 
French soldier left in Egypt. 

Buonaparte proposed to counterbalance these blows to his 
anticipation by an invasion of England, and collected an 
enormous flotilla of gun-boats and transports at Boulogne to 
convey an army across the Channel. But the British go¬ 
vernment sent Nelson with a small squadron to watch that 
port, and an attack which he made on the flotilla, though it 
did not succeed in carrying off any of the vessels, which were 
found to be firmly chained both to each other and to the 
ground, convinced the enemy that any attempt to force a 
passage to our coasts was impracticable, and Buonaparte 
again expressed a desire to treat for peace. Negotiations 
were speedily set on foot, and in March, 1802, peace was 
definitively signed at Amiens. We agreed to restore nearly 
all our colonial conquests except Ceylon, and to replace the 
knights of St. John at Malta, while the independence of 
that important island was to be secured by the protection of 
a neutral power. France was to evacuate the Boman and 
Neapolitan territories, and to guarantee the integrity of 
Portugal, which country she had lately attacked, and from 
which she had extorted a large sum of money. The condi¬ 
tions of peace were vehemently attacked by some of 
the late ministry, especially by lord Grenville and Mr. 
Wyndham; but Pitt defended the ministry, and the ap¬ 
proval of the peace was carried by large majorities. There 
seems reason for saying that, considering our successes in 
Egypt, and our uninterrupted series of naval triumphs, the 
concessions which we made were too great; but the people 
were weary of war, and Sheridan expressed the general feel¬ 
ing when he said that, though no one was proud of the 
peace, every one was glad of it. 

It was not destined to be of very long duration. It was 
soon seen that Buonaparte’s object was not permanent tran¬ 
quillity, but a respite which should enable him hereafter to 
make war, particularly on England, with greater effect. In 
the autumn of 1802 he procured himself to be named consul 
for life, and, as he now felt assured of the stability of his 
power, he began to show his arbitrary and unscrupulous 
character to its full extent. The revolutions which he 
effected in Holland, in Piedmont, and in Switzerland showed 
an aggressive spirit which alarmed every statesman, and 
made even the sincerest advocates of peace doubtful of the 


A.D. 

1801— 

1802. 




A.D. 
1802 - 
1804 . 


730 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

possibility of long maintaining it. Even Fox found his 
love of peace overpowered by his love of justice and of 
liberty, and declaimed with eloquent indignation against 
the bad faith of the French government; and, while we 
were becoming suspicious of Buonaparte, he himself was 
becoming irritated against us. In his own country he had 
entirely crushed the press, and the liberty which was per¬ 
mitted to it with us, displayed as it was in free comments on 
his character and actions, was a constant source of provoca¬ 
tion to him. He instructed his ambassador to make a 
formal demand that publications attacking his proceedings 
should be suppressed; and not only that, but that the 
princes of the French royal family, with a great number of 
their adherents, who were residing in England, should be 
removed from the country. To demands so inconsistent 
with the whole spirit of the British constitution no answer 
but a positive refusal could possibly be returned; but* as 
some of the articles in the newspapers were clearly of a 
libellous character, the attorney-general was ordered to 
prosecute the publisher of the most unjustifiable, and he 
was convicted. 

This appeal to the law, however, was far from satisfying 
Buonaparte’s irritable spirit; and the indications of war 
became so threatening that the English government decided 
on delaying the execution of the treaty of Amiens, as 
regarded the evacuation of Malta and Egypt, and declared 
their intention of retaining those places till France gave a 
satisfactory explanation of her recent conduct with regard 
to Holland and Switzerland. Buonaparte’s anger was ex¬ 
treme. He declared that he would rather see the English 
in the possession of the Faubourg St. Antoine than of 
Malta; and, at a levee at the Tuileries, he attacked lord 
Whitworth, the English ambassador, on the subject with a 
vehemence which astonished all the spectators, and which 
convinced every one that he was merely seeking a pretext 
for the immediate renewal of war. * All parties in the 
British parliament resented the insult offered to the repre¬ 
sentative of the nation, and agreed in an augmentation of 
the naval and military forces ; and in May, 1803, war was 
formally declared. 

To show his contempt for all ordinary laws and customs, 
Buonaparte signalized the commencement of this new war 
by a detention of all the English travellers whom amusement 












GEORGE III. 


731 


LXV.] 

or curiosity had attracted to France. It was in vain that a.d. 
some of his most trusted officers remonstrated against such 
an unprecedented aggravation of the miseries of war. He 
would hear no contradiction or argument on the subject, 
but at once seized and imprisoned upwards of 10,000 per¬ 
sons, some of whom were afterwards permitted a modified 
degree of liberty in French towns, but the greater part of 
whom were kept in rigorous confinement till the end of the 
war. The indignation which this outrage upon individuals 
excited in England no doubt contributed to swell the par¬ 
liamentary majority which approved of the minister’s con¬ 
duct ; and the events at the beginning of the next year, when 
Buonaparte seized the duke d’Enghien and put him to death, 
and assumed the title of emperor of France as Napoleon I., 
tended still more to unite parties in England. 

He again meditated an invasion of this country, and 
Boulogne and the whole of the northern coast resounded 
with the din of the most extensive preparations. We, on 
our part, were not idle : besides the regular army, which was 
greatly augmented, above 300,000 volunteers were enrolled; 
a powerful fleet was sent to the Mediterranean under Nelson, 
while smaller squadrons and single cruisers covered the seas 
in every direction; and taxes were voted with unexampled 
liberality. But as no triumphs were the immediate result 
of these exertions, the nation speedily became discontented 
with Mr. Addington, as not possessed of talents equal to the 
occasion. Foreign nations also, which were inclined to 
ally themselves with us, showed a great distrust of his 
capacity, and every one began to look for Pitt’s return to 
power as indispensable to the welfare of the country. He 
was willing to resume office, and his own desire was to form 
a ministry of irresistible strength by an union with the 
leaders of the Whig section of the opposition; but the king 
positively refused to allow Fox to be included in the new 
arrangement, and lord Grenville, who was jealous of Pitt’s 
superior ability and influence with some who looked up to 
him as their guide, on his part declined a share in a 
ministry, which, at such a crisis, was formed on a principle 
of exclusion. It is a striking corroboration of the remark 
previously made, how little Pitt, though always called a Tory, 
did in his system of government differ from the Whigs, 
and that the wide distance which now exists between the 
two parties has been caused by the gradual divergence of 





732 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. both from their original principles, that, even now, after both 

1804. j iac [ been necessarily somewhat embittered against each 
other by twenty years of constant opposition, neither he nor 
Box saw any thing to prevent their acting in concert. Such 
a combination, however, was positively forbidden by the 
king, and Pitt, in consequence, was left to bear the chief 
burden of government single-handed. Lord Melville, for¬ 
merly Mr. Dundas, became first lord of the admiralty, and 
his administration of that all-important branch of the public 
service greatly discountenances those who maintain that the 
first lord of the admiralty should be a sailor, since his pre¬ 
decessor, earl St. Vincent, inferior only to Nelson as a 
naval officer, had allowed the navy to degenerate into a sad 
state of inefficiency, from which lord Melville’s energy and 
ability rapidly recovered it. 

The emancipation of the Homan Catholics was the question 
which had driven Pitt from the government three years 
before, and some critics have attacked him violently for his 
conduct. on this occasion, in not only making no further 
mention of their claims, as if he had sacrificed them to his 
own lust for power, but in even resisting them when they 
were brought forward by Pox and lord Grenville; but the 
real cause of his conduct on this point was the state of the 
king’s health. George III. had lately had two or three 
attacks of decided derangement, not always unaccompanied 
by danger to his life, and any thing which strongly agitated 
him was almost certain to produce a recurrence of his 
malady. There can be no doubt that, under these circum¬ 
stances, Pitt judged wisely and properly in avoiding any 
thing that could lead to such a catastrophe; which was the 
more to be dreaded from the strange proofs of violence and 
indiscretion lately exhibited by the prince of AVales. He 
had been married some years to the princess Caroline of 
Brunswick, but they had been separated soon after the birth 
of their only child, the princess Charlotte; his quarrel with 
her and with the king about the education of the youthful 
princess had been made discreditably public; and he had 
further increased the king’s indignation against him by 
publishing in the newspapers some letters which he had 
received from his majesty, refusing to sanction his appoint¬ 
ment to a high military command. The prince of Wales, 
even by the admission of those who blame his general con¬ 
duct most severely, had very considerable talents and an 








GEORGE IIT. 


733 


LXV.] 

excellent natural disposition; but lie was weak, and easily a.d. 
led by advisers who sought to make him a tool for their own 1^4— 
purposes, and he had no sense of his own dignity, or of the I805 * 
real greatness of his position. 

Pitt at once directed his attention to the formation of a 
confederacy against Prance, and his efforts were crowned 
with considerable success; [Russia, Austria, and Sweden 
signed treaties of alliance with England, and with the excep¬ 
tion of Spain, there was no great power on whose aid Prance 
could calculate in the approaching struggle. Spain, as it 
had done before, sought to temporize till the arrival of the 
galleons laden with the yearly treasures of South America; 
but, as the British government had certain intelligence of 
her hostile intentions and warlike preparations, they sent 
out a squadron to intercept the expected vessels, not as 
prizes of war, since war between the two countries was not 
declared, but as pledges for the continuance of Spain’s 
peaceful conduct. To carry out such an object, it is plain 
that a fleet should have been sent out so strong, that the 
Spaniards might have submitted to what was required of 
them without disgrace ; but four frigates only were employed 
on this service, a force equal in number and inferior in size 
to the galleons. The two squadrons met off Cadiz, in 
October, 1804, and the English commodore entreated the 
Spanish commander to submit to the peaceful detention 
which he was ordered to enforce. The Spaniard, of course, 
rejected the demand with indignation; an engagement ensued; 
one of the Spanish vessels blew up, the others were captured; 
and Spain instantly declared war against England, with but 
too plausible grounds for impeaching her good faith. 

At the beginning of the year 1805 Napoleon again wrote 
to England to propose peace; but his actions were so much 
at variance with his professions that the latter were not 
listened to ; and, in fact, his assumption of the crown of 
Italy, which took place early in the spring, and his incor¬ 
poration of Genoa with France, would of themselves have 
been almost sufficient to excite a war, even if peace had pre¬ 
viously existed. He began again to prepare for an invasion 
of England on an immense scale: 150,000 men were col¬ 
lected in the neighbourhood of Boulogne ; nearly 4000 gun¬ 
boats and transports were prepared in the different har¬ 
bours on the northern coasts of France, while, by a well- 
conceived set of operations, the four fleets lying in the 




A.D. 

1805. 


734 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

harbours of Toulon, Eerrol, Bochefort, and Brest, were in¬ 
tended to unite in the British Channel, and to protect the 
armament in its passage to the Kentish shores. At the 
end of March Villeneuve, the admiral of the Toulon fleet, 
quitted that harbour, joined the Spanish fleet lying in Cadiz, 
and sailed for the West Indies with twenty-eight ships. 
Kelson had only thirteen, and those not in good condition, 
from haying been at sea two years ; but the moment that he 
ascertained the destination of the enemy, he pursued them, 
gaining rapidly on them as he tracked them from island to 
island, till at last, in the middle of June, he discovered that 
they had returned to Europe. He sent instant intelligence 
of their movements to England, and himself returned to 
Gibraltar, where he ascertained that they had not entered the 
Mediterranean; he hastened at once to Ireland, which he 
suspected to be their destination, found they were not there, 
and then, at the latter end of August, returned to England. 

Villeneuve had escaped Kelson; but, before he could 
reach the Channel, he was encountered by sir Bobert 
Calder, whom the admiralty, on hearing from Kelson of the 
departure of the Erench from the West Indies, had de¬ 
spatched with fifteen ships to cruise off Cape Einisterre, and 
intercept them. The combined fleets were greatly superior 
in number, but the British at once attacked them, and took 
two of the Spanish ships. Kight separated the combatants; 
and, though the two fleets were close to one another the 
next morning, neither chose to renew the engagement; 
Villeneuve retired to Eerrol, and Calder to the Channel. 
It was many years since a British admiral had forborne to 
attack an enemy which was in sight; and though sir Bobert 
had shown both skill and courage in the action of the pre¬ 
ceding day, his want of energy in allowing his beaten foes 
to retire unmolested, caused great discontent in England, 
and he was severely reprimanded by a court-martial. 

Villeneuve had gone from Eerrol to Cadiz, where he was 
closely blocked by admiral Collingwood, Kelson’s dearest 
friend, and second only to himself in professional skill, 
intrepidity, and patriotism. But as soon as Kelson had 
recruited his strength, which had been severely tasked by 
the fatigues of a two years’ blockade of Toulon, and by his 
rapid chase of the enemy to and from the West Indies, 
he again sailed from Portsmouth to resume the command. 
It was touching afterwards, when the news of his unparal- 




GEORGE I [I. 


735 


LXV.J 

leled victory and glorious death reached the ears of his a.i>. 
countrymen, to recollect the fond eagerness with which the 
whole population of the town had pressed upon his steps 
as he went down the street for the last time to his boat; 
how' the windows and housetops were thronged with gazers, 
while the salutes which hailed the hoisting of his flag were 
lost amid the heartfelt cheers which proclaimed the love of 
the whole people for their hero, and their confidence in his 
success. 

His arrival off Cadiz was greeted by his comrades with 
equal enthusiasm, but was carefully concealed from the 
knowledge of the enemy, whom no superiority of numbers 
would have tempted to sea, had they believed him to be in 
their neighbourhood; but who, fancying that he was cer¬ 
tainly in England, quitted Cadiz on the 19th of October, 
and were instantly pursued by him. On the 21st he came 
up with them off Cape Trafalgar. They had forty ships, he 
had thirty-one; but the victory was not in doubt for a 
moment. Yilleneuve was a brave and skilful seaman, 
and, when he found battle inevitable, he prepared for the 
struggle with coolness and ingenuity. On land, before an 
action, generals have often harangued their troops with 
great effect, or, riding along their front, by their visible pre¬ 
sence and gestures have animated those whom their voice 
could not reach; an admiral can only be heard or seen 
by his own crew; but no spirit-stirring harangue, the mar¬ 
tial presence and dauntless bearing of no well-tried chief 
ever excited such enthusiasm among his troops as Nelson’s 
last signal, couched in a few brief, plain words, but speaking 
to the heart of every man in his fleet, and destined to live 
for ever in the recollection of every Englishman. “ England 
expects every man to do his duty” were the words of ex¬ 
hortation signalled from the masthead of the Victory, his 
appropriately-named flag-ship. They were received with a 
cheer by the whole fleet, who burned with a desire to prove 
that they shared the feelings of, and were not unworthy 
to serve under such a commander. Onwards sailed the 
British fleet in two columns, Nelson and Collingwood each 
leading one, and speedily pierced the hostile line in two 
places; ship grappled with ship, and for some hours nothing^ 
was seen or heard but the dense smoke and ceaseless roar of 
the death-dealing artillery. As the evening approached the 
firing ceased; one small squadron of the enemy was seen 




736 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. retreating into Cadiz, another was fleeing to the northward, 

1805. the rest, nearly two-thirds of the whole combined fleet, were 
in our possession. 

The battle of Trafalgar was over; the combined fleets 
were destroyed. All idea of resistance to England at sea 
was banished from the minds of her enemies for ever, as an 
impracticable and hopeless dream; yet the victory was 
dearly won, for Nelson had fallen. The tops of the French 
ships had been filled with riflemen, from one of whom 
Nelson, conspicuous among his officers by the stars of his 
numerous orders of knighthood sewn into the breast of his 
coat, received a fatal wound soon after the commencement 
of the battle. He died while the last guns were being fired 
after the flying enemy. 

The history of the world can show no man so completely 
without a rival in his line. In other fields of glory different 
ages or different nations contest the palm, if not with 
perfect reason, at least with plausibility. Frenchmen or 
Italians may set up the claims of Galileo or Laplace in 
opposition to Bacon and Newton ; England boasts of more 
than one of her orators as the equals of Cicero and Demos¬ 
thenes (I omit to mention the speakers of the Continent 
in modern times, since where there is no real freedom, 
real eloquence can have no existence) ; while in military 
warfare, not to speak of the ancient generals, of Alexander, 
of Caesar, or of Hannibal, the profoundest military critics 
doubt whether to assign the palm to the sleepless caution 
of Marlborough, to the tenacious resolution and readiness 
of resource amid disaster that distinguished Frederic; to 
the marvellous combinations, and lightning-like execution 
of Napoleon, or to that admirable mixture of prudence and 
enterprise that conducted Wellington in unbroken triumph 
from Lisbon to Paris ; but no time, ancient or modern, no 
foreign country, nor even England herself, can produce any 
name to contest with Nelson the glory of being the greatest 
sailor that ever guided a ship amid the storm, or led a fleet 
to certain victory. 

No hero was ever so beloved. Yet it is not so much 
to his pre-eminence in courage, in skill, and in achieve¬ 
ment that he owes the place which he possessed in life, 
and which he retains after death in the affections of his 
countrymen, as to the heroic simplicity of his character, 
his feminine gentleness of heart, genuine humanity, and 







GEORGE III. 


737 


LXV. ] 

consideration for even the meanest of his comrades, the 
self-forgetful patriotism which made the promotion of the 
honour and safety of England the sole object of his aspira¬ 
tions, and the humble piety with which, even in the first 
moments of success, he ascribed it to the protection of 
God, and with which he prayed for victory, not as conducive 
to his own renown, but as the service due from him to his 
king and country. These were the qualities which made 
Englishmen grieve at the tidings of Trafalgar; so that one 
of the most acute observers of the time has recorded that 
every common person in the streets spoke first of their 
sorrow for him, and then of the victory, and which are still 
so fixed in .the recollection of the nation, that lately, 
when our great military hero was taken from us, and when 
all tongues were vying in expressions of respect for and 
attachment to one who had so long filled so large a space 
in our eyes, his warmest panegyrists, in describing the 
pomp and ceremony with which his remains were laid in 
the grave, could find no higher praise for him, than that 
he was not unworthy to be laid, as he was laid, beside 
the still honoured and still loved dust of the mighty 
Nelson. 

Of the confederacy formed against France England alone 
was successful. On the Continent Napoleon closed a short 
but brilliant campaign by the capture of Vienna, and a 
total overthrow of the Austrian and Russian armies on the 
field of Austerlitz, which compelled both those powers to 
make peace. The disappointment of his hopes had a fatal 
effect upon Pitt. His health had been declining for some 
months, and the anxiety now pressing on his mind was 
too much for his constitution, exhausted by the incessant 
fatigues of official life. On the 23rd of January, 1806, he 
died, before he had completed his forty-seventh year; yet, 
according to his physician, as completely of old age as if 
he had been ninety; according to his most faithful friend, 
"Wilberforce, of a broken heart. 

Even party animosity, which has seldom run higher than 
during many years of his administration, did not deny Pitt 
many of the qualities of a great statesman; and since his 
death his fame has been steadily on the rise, till he is now 
generally acknowledged as the greatest minister who has 
governed this kingdom. His abilities were of the very 
highest order. To a clearness of intellect that nothing 


A.D. 

1805— 

1800. 







738 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.b. could confuse, and a promptitude of apprehension that 

1806. no thing could surprise, he added the greatest courage and 
firmness, and set off these great qualities with an eloquence, 
not as imaginative and replete with varied learning as that 
of Burke, nor as vehement and impassioned as that of 
Box, but majestic and dignified, admirably suited to his 
position as the chief minister of a great nation, at all times 
singularly appropriate to its subject, and always under the 
dominion of the purest taste. To render these great gifts 
more admirable, they were ever exerted on the side of j 
freedom and virtue, and were accompanied by the most 
entire disinterestedness, and the most spotless integrity. 

As a financial minister he was the first who introduced 
into our commercial system the sound principles of freedom 
of trade, which, though now generally acknowledged, were 
at that time neither admitted nor comprehended by the 
generality of politicians ; and the extent to which he was 
in advance of his age may be further seen, if we recollect 
that he was the first proposer of the great measures of 
parliamentary reform, and of Boman Catholic emancipation, 
which have only been carried within the recollection of the 
present generation. 

The errors which have been charged against his admi¬ 
nistration are only two, the crown prosecutions for treason 
in 1794, and the inefficiency of the means taken to carry 
on the war; for, though he was at the time vehemently 
attacked for allowing himself to be engaged in war at all, 
it is now generally conceded that war was inevitable. With 
respect to the prosecutions for treason, they were un¬ 
doubtedly impolitic and improper; but the blame belongs 
not so much to the prime minister as to the law officers 
of the crown, who endeavoured to exaggerate into high 
treason charges which were only sufficient to prove sedition. 
That the measures adopted for the prosecution of the war 
upon the Continent were wanting in vigour and in large¬ 
ness of views cannot be denied; but we must recollect that 
no one anticipated the convulsive strength with which the 
revolution animated France; since even Burke, the most 
far-sighted of all statesmen, looked upon that event as the 
downfal of her power, as well as of her glory; and still 
less could any one foresee the astonishing genius of Napo¬ 
leon, to whom alone it was owing that the confederacies 
which Pitt, with great ability, formed against France, 





LXVI.] GEORGE HI. 739 

crumbled to pieces. At the same time justice has not 
been done to the unbroken series of naval triumphs which 
distinguished his administration, and which certainly show 
that there was no want of vigour in his war measures, when 
he could act unhampered by his selfish and pusillanimous 
allies. 

In his private character he was the most amiable of men, 
the most light-hearted, witty, and engaging of companions; 
but his friends, deep as was their sorrow for their own 
bereavement, forgot it in the consideration of the irreparable 
loss to his country ; and the qualities dwelt on by the most 
faithful of them all, who yet never flattered, and never 
feared to oppose him, were not his social excellences, but 
his unswerving regard for truth, his personal purity, his 
disinterestedness, his integrity, and unmixed, undying love 
for his country. 


CHAPTER LXVI. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

The death of Pitt broke up the ministry, and compelled the 
king to yield his prejudices against Fox, and he and lord 
Grenville combined both their parties with the adherents of 
Mr. Addington, who had been created lord Sidmouth, and 
formed a government which was hailed with great satisfac¬ 
tion, as embracing a more numerous body of able men than 
had previously been united at the same time in the service 
of the crown. Lord Grenville became first lord of the trea¬ 
sury, Fox was foreign secretary; and, besides these two chiefs, 
lord Howick, who shortly afterwards succeeded to his 
father’s title of earl Grey, presided at the admiralty; 
Wyndham was secretary for war and for the colonies; 
Erskine, the greatest advocate that had ever adorned the 
bar, received the great seal; while the office of chancellor of 
the exchequer was assigned to a younger son of Fox’s former 
antagonist, lord Shelburne, then known as lord Henry 
Petty, who still survives as the marquis of Lansdowne, 
receiving the reward of a consistent, honourable, and useful 
life in the cordial attachment of his numerous friends, and 
the sincere respect of his opponents. 

For a time the affairs of the kingdom proceeded quietly 
at home ; while abroad the year was signalized by our first 
victory gained on the continent of Europe since the war 

3 b 2 


A.D. 

1806. 










740 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. broke out. Napoleon had installed his brother Joseph as 

1»0(>. ki n g 0 f Naples, and the dissatisfaction evinced by the 
Italians in general encouraged sir John Stuart to cross over 
with 5000 men from Sicily to Calabria. Regnier, the 
French general, commanded a force nearly one-half larger 
in that district, and at once advanced to attack him. The 
armies met at Maida, on the 6th of July, and the French 
were completely defeated with the loss, including prisoners, 
of two-thirds of their numbers. On the sea we were no 
less successful. Large fleets no longer ventured to leave 
the French harbours; but two small squadrons, which were 
cruising about in hopes to harass our traders, were met with 
by admiral Duckworth and by sir Richard Strachan, and 
almost every ship of them was taken or destroyed. 

Again negotiations were .commenced with a view to peace ; 
but Napoleon, who had expected from Fox’s well-known 
attachment to that greatest of blessings to find him eager 
to pay any price for its attainment, was disappointed at 
discovering that, though on questions of minor importance 
he had too often made his own ambition or the interest of 
his party the rule of his conduct u , now that the honour and 
welfare of his country were at stake, he was as resolute and 
firm as Pitt had been. It soon became plain that Napoleon 
would agree to no terms which would not leave it in his 
power to recommence his aggressions as soon as ever he 
perceived a favourable opportunity. The negotiations were 
protracted for some time, while he kept varying his propo¬ 
sals as the probability of his being able to conclude a sepa¬ 
rate peace with Russia varied: but at last it was so apparent 
that there was no prospect of concluding a lasting peace, 
that the English ministers broke off the negotiations alto¬ 
gether. 4 

Before the British plenipotentiary was recalled from Paris 
Fox was dead. In the early part of the summer he was 
attacked with dropsy, and after severe suffering died on the 
13th of September. During his whole life he was so short 
a time in office that we have not the same materials for 
estimating his qualities as a ruler of the nation which are 
afforded us by the long official career of his great rival. 
But, though in retrieving the affairs of the country after the 
American war he would have been far inferior to Pitt, since 

9 See lord Brougham’s character of him, Statesmen of George III., vol i 
p. 273, last edition. 






GEORGE III. 


741 


CH. 


LX VI.] 


as 

tlie 


?er 

rhe 

nek 


no 


'ere 

ritk 

and 


ice; 
)wn 
iger 
1 at 
nee 
; of 
and 
and 
eon 
his 
lie 
ere 
po¬ 
ps- 
ent 
■ce, 
to- 


m 

he 

irt 

'or 

n 

al. 

lie 

ce 


he had no taste for finance, and was wholly ignorant of 
political economy, and though he made a grievous mistake 
in his estimate of the character of the French revolution, 
yet in other respects his statesmanlike qualities were of a 
very high order, and of the history and feelings of foreign 
nations, and of our relations with them, he had a thorough 
knowledge, and generally most just and accurate views. As 
an orator he was gifted with great eloquence, in which the 
closest reasoning w r as enlivened with impassioned declama¬ 
tion, and with the most lively wit; and as a parliamentary 
debater he was confessedly unrivalled. The favourite son of 
an unscrupulous father, he had not been bred in a school of 
rigid virtue, whether personal or political, and his warmest 
admirers admit that his great gifts were sometimes prosti¬ 
tuted to the most factious aims of a wounded party spirit; 
but they were oftener and more earnestly employed in the 
cause of freedom and of peace. Of the abolition of slavery 
no one, save Wilberforce himself, was a more zealous advo¬ 
cate ; and in the cause of peace he was equally untiring, 
though never willing to purchase it by concessions unworthy 
of the honour of his country. As a man he was distin¬ 
guished by the most warm-hearted and generous disposition 
that ever riveted the affection of friends, and disarmed the 
hostility of antagonists. “ To be sure, he is a man made to 
be loved,” was Burke’s description of him even after his 
differences with him on French politics had broken off their 
former friendship, and that feeling still embalms his memory 
in the eyes of his countrymen, who remember that his faults 
were such as arose from education and circumstances, that 
his virtues were the spontaneous and enduring fruit of a 
most noble and magnanimous natural disposition. 

His place at the foreign office was filled by lord Howick, 
who was succeeded at the admiralty by Mr. T. G-renville, a 
brother of the prime minister. But the ministry was 
greatly weakened both in ability and popularity by the loss 
of Fox. One great measure was carried at the beginning of 
the next year, the entire abolition of the slave-trade, in which 
it was now made a great crime for any British subject to 
engage: but their warlike measures proved singularly un¬ 
fortunate in every quarter of the globe. The last exploit 
which signalized Pitt’s administration had been the reduc¬ 
tion of the Cape of Good Hope by sir David Baird and sir 
Home Popham; and Popham, elated by success, had, with- 


A.D. 

1800 — 

1807. 




742 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[oh. | 

a.t). out authority, crossed over to South America, and taken 

I 0 O 7 . B U enos Ayres, from which, however, he was speedily ex¬ 
pelled. The government, though indignant at hi,s conduct, 
for which they brought him to a court-martial, yet thought 
it necessary to wipe away the disgrace of his failure by a 
fresh expedition, and sent one to the mouth of the La 
Plata. The first division, under sir Samuel Achmuty, took 
Monte Video; and, when general Whitelocke arrived wdth 
the main body, the whole army proceeded to attack Buenos 
Ayres. Whitelocke showed the most utter incompetency, 
was defeated with great loss, was forced to restore Monte 
Video and to evacuate South America, and, on his return 
home, was deservedly cashiered. 

We were hardly more fortunate in Africa, where an expe¬ 
dition sent from Sicily, though it succeeded at first in occu¬ 
pying Rosetta and Alexandria, was at last overpowered by 
numbers, and was glad to purchase a safe retreat from 
Egypt by the abandonment of all its acquisitions ; and 
about the same time a squadron, sent against Constanti¬ 
nople, where France had established a preponderating in¬ 
fluence, equally failed in attaining its object. Sir Thomas 
Duckworth, w r ho commanded the fleet, showed himself a 
bold and able seaman, forced the passage of the Dardanelles, 
and burnt several of the Turkish ships ; but he proved a 
most unskilful negotiator, allowing the French ambassador, 
Sebastiani, to amuse him with pretended negotiations, till 
Constantinople, which might at first have been taken by 
surprise, was put into a state of complete defence; and 
then, finding the city unassailable, he was compelled to 
retrace his steps, which he did not do without suffering 
considerable damage in his ships from the enormous batteries 
which commanded the passage of the Dardanelles. 

These events did not increase the popularity of the minis¬ 
try ; and, in the spring of 1807, they offended the king by 
introducing a bill in favour of the Roman Catholics. It 
was a far less comprehensive measure than that which had 
been proposed by Pitt in 1801, being, in fact, only a bill 
to enable Roman Catholics to hold commissions in the army 
and navy in England and Scotland, similar to one which had 
been passed by the Irish parliament a few years before the 
union. The king, however, conceived that he was prevented 
by his coronation oath from consenting to such an act; and 
not only required the ministers to withdraw their present 







LXVI.] GEOEGE III. 743 

proposition, but to pledge themselves never to renew it at 
any future time. They would not, of their own accord, 
have brought their bill forward now, but they thought 
themselves fettered in some degree by promises which they 
had made while in opposition ; and they were entirely adverse 
to moving the question of the general removal of the Roman 
Catholic disabilities, seeing, not only that the king was 
unalterably resolved not to consent to it, but also that the 
nation in general was very unfavourable to such a step, as 
bad been proved in 1805 by the large majorities in both 
houses of parliament; but they, not unnaturally, refused to 
pledge themselves for ever to the abandonment of a measure 
which they believed to be just, and might, possibly, here¬ 
after find indispensable. On giving this refusal they were 
dismissed from their offices, and the duke of Portland, who, 
with lord Sidmouth, had been for some days busily intriguing 
against them, was entrusted with the task of forming a new 
ministry. It included no less than three future prime ministers, 
Mr. Perceval as chancellor of the exchequer, lord Hawkes- 
bury as home secretary, and Mr. Canning, who had held a 
subordinate office under Pitt, whom he had impressed with 
the very highest idea of his abilities, as foreign secretary, while 
the management of the war and of the colonies was allotted 
to lord Castlereagh, who had already, as Irish secretary, dis¬ 
played great talents for business, joined to eminent courage 
and firmness, though his efficiency as a leader of the house 
of commons was somewhat marred by an entire want of elo¬ 
quence, or rather by such a confused style of speaking, as 
often left the hearers in the dark as to his meaning, and 
oftener still moved them to laughter by the incongruity and 
absurdity of his metaphors. Lord Eldon resumed the great 
seal, which he held from this time for upwards of twenty 
years, during which he established his fame as one of the 
greatest lawyers that had ever presided over the administra¬ 
tion of justice. 

Though not yet a member of the government, another 
statesman was rapidly asserting his right to a leading place 
in the councils of his country. The marquis of Wellesley 
had lately returned from the government of India, which he 
had administered with great glory and with great success. 
Over that vast country British dominion had gone on 
steadily increasing. Even while in England Hastings was 
yearly experiencing the ingratitude of his countrymen, his 


A.D. 

1807- 






744 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


1 ) 


[CH. 

a.d.' -worthy successor, lord Cornwallis, provoked by the ceaseless 

1807. p os tility of Tippoo, had attacked him, defeated him, and de¬ 
prived him of half his territories; but Tippoo was rather 
exasperated than intimidated by his defeat, and, a few years 
later, being encouraged by the weakness of sir John Shore’s 
government, he proposed an alliance with the French, with 
the avowed object of expelling the English wholly from 
Hindostan. Fortunately, before his plans could be put in 
execution, sir John, a well-meaniifg and virtuous, but timid 
and narrow-minded man, had been replaced by lord Wel¬ 
lesley, who at once adopted a bolder policy. Tippoo’s over¬ 
tures to France were a sufficient justification of the renewal 
of war on our part; and lord Wellesley prepared to wage it 
with an amplitude of means that should ensure complete 
success. When all was ready Tippoo’s territories were 
invaded on both sides at once, with such powerful armies 
that his own did not greatly outnumber them, and the con¬ 
test was not in doubt for a moment. He ventured on a 
battle with one division, which was easily defeated ; and a 
few days afterwards his capital, Seringapatam, was stormed 
by general Harris ; he himself was slain ; enormous treasures 
of every kind fell into the hands of the conquerors, and a 
territory of great importance, in every point of view, was 
added to the company’s dominions. Fresh additions were 
soon made to them by the voluntary cession of the nizam, 
and lord AVellesley found himself sufficiently powerful to be 
able, as has already been mentioned, to send a considerable 
force to Egypt, to assist in the expulsion of the French from 
that country. 

When not at war he was indefatigable in negotiations 
with the native princes, by which he made acquisitions almost 
as large as the fruits of his victories. The nawaub of Oude 
ceded one large district, the ruler of the Carnatic surren¬ 
dered another; and at last the rapid growth of the British 
power alarmed some of the Mahrattas, a warlike tribe, the 
nominal sovereign of which was a prince, called the peish- 
wah, who resided at Poonah, but who had lately been ex¬ 
pelled from his capital by the subordinate chieftains, Holkar 
and Scindia. In his distress he applied to lord Wellesley 
for aid, who willingly agreed to reinstate him in his domi¬ 
nions, and sent a strong force into the Mahratta territory, 
under his brother, general Arthur AVellesley, who had 
already distinguished himself, and whose judgment and 











GEORGE III. 


LX VI.] 


4 


45 


enterprise now gave some omen of the mighty exploits a.d. 
which he was hereafter to achieve, and by which he has 1807. 
immortalized the name of Wellington. 

A still more powerful army was collected on the frontier 
of Oude, under lord Lake, and as no satisfactory explana¬ 
tions could be procured from Scindia, who was assisted by 
a third Mahratta chieftaiD, the rajah of Berar, lord Wellesley 
resolved on at once commencing hostilities against him, and 
at the beginning of 1803 lord Lake and general Wellesley 1803. 
attacked him on both frontiers of his dominions. Both 
generals achieved a succession of triumphs. Lake defeated 
an army by far more numerous than his own, commanded 
by a skilful Erench general, named Perron, and entirely 
officered by French officers ; stormed Alligbur, one of the 
strongest fortresses in all India, gained a second decisive 
victory at Delhi, took that celebrated city, the time-honoured 
capital of Hindostan, and drove the Erench officers to sub¬ 
mit to a capitulation, by virtue of which they returned to 
their own country, defeated the enemy a third time at Agra, 
by the final rout of Laswaree, broke the whole power of 
Scindia over the northern portion of his territories, and 
by the capture of all his military stores disabled him from 
giving the British any future uneasiness in that quarter. 

Wellesley’s success was equally decisive. He invaded' 
the territories of the rajah of Berar, to whose aid Scindia 
came in person; but fortress after fortress fell before the 
British general, till the allied chieftains were forced, as a 
last resource, to endeavour to check his progress in the 
field of Assaye. In an open plain they felt confident of 
success. They had a powerful infantry, a magnificent force 
of 30,000 cavalry, and 100 guns, under the command of 
Erench officers. Wellesley’s force did not amount in 
number to one-fifth of that of the enemy; and he had but 
seventeen guns. Nevertheless, he attacked them as boldly 
as if there had been no inequality in the two armies. The 
Indians fought splendidly; their artillery was served with 
great skill and accuracy; their cavalry distinguished them¬ 
selves by the gallantry of their repeated charges; but all 
together they were no match for the invincible steadiness 
of the British troops, and the dauntless heart and eagle 
eye of the British general. No battle in India was ever 
so stubbornly contested. It had begun soon after midday. 

It was almost night when the enemy fled in disorder, leaving 




746 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. 8000 men slain or wounded on the battle-field, and all their 

1807« artillery as the prize of the conquerors. A second battle 
at Argaum was almost equally fatal to them; and, at last, 
Scindia and the rajah of Berar were compelled to sue for 
peace, and to purchase it by the cession of their most 
valuable territories. 

At first Holkar had gained great advantages over the 
force opposed to him. Colonel Monson, an officer of heroic 
courage, but of little skill, lost nearly all his division in an 
ill-judged retreat, and all Lake’s energy and matchless 
rapidity of operation were required to neutralize the effect 
of his indecision. Lake, however, w T as not wanting to the 
occasion. By a skilful division of his forces he attacked 
Holkar in two places at once. General Eraser routed the 
battalions opposed to him at Dieg. He himself almost 
destroyed Holkar’s own division by a night attack on his 
camp at Jurruckabad; and, though he failed in the siege 
of Bhurtpore, he gave him two more severe defeats, and 
drove him also to buy peace by concessions little inferior 
to those which had been extorted from his ally and father- 
in-law, Scindia. 

Lord Wellesley returned from India in 1805, and at 
once took an active part in home politics, as a supporter of 
'Pitt’s policy, and afterwards of that of the duke of Port¬ 
land, in whose government his brother, now sir Arthur 
Wellesley, was the Irish secretary. The new ministers 
began to prosecute warlike measures with great vigour, 
though not always with judgment; because Buonaparte 
issued a tyrannical and ridiculous edict, which (from having 
been signed at Berlin while he was in possession of that 
capital) was known as the Berlin decree, declaring the 
British islands in a state of blockade, and prohibiting all 
countries from any commercial intercourse with them; we, 
in retaliation, published an equally unwise order of the 
privy council, pronouncing the whole Prench coast in a 
state of blockade, and declaring every vessel bound for a 
Prench port liable to capture, even though belonging to a 
country with which we were at peace. This order was 
vehemently attacked by the opposition, and ably defended 
by the ministers; but it is liable to two unanswerable 
objections. As against the Prench it was no doubt justi¬ 
fiable ; but the misfortune was that those injured by it 
were not so much the Prench as neutral nations; and, 




GEORGE III. 


747 


LX VI.] 

secondly, as far as it was carried out, it injured ourselves 
more than any of them; since, as we were the greatest 
traders in the world, every measure that had a tendency to 
contract trade was more hurtful to us than to any other 
power. Fortunately both edict and order in council were, 
to a great extent, inoperative. Buonaparte was so little 
able to enforce the execution of the edict, that he violated 
it himself; allowing the contracts for the clothing of his 
troops to be taken by the British manufacturers; and, after 
a time, openly selling licences to authorize its violation; 
while we connived in an almost equal degree at the trans¬ 
gression of the order in council. 

Another step taken by the government, however, though 
censured far more furiously at the time, was conceived with 
great judgment and courage, and executed with admirable 
vigour, and is now allowed to have been fully justified. The 
battle of Friedland had compelled Russia to make peace 
with France, and to a treaty concluded at Tilsit the two 
emperors added a number of secret articles, by one of which 
they agreed to require the Portuguese, the Swedes, and the 
Danes to close their harbours against English vessels, and 
to place their fleets at the disposal of the new allies. 
Buonaparte’s object was to unite all the fleets of the world 
against the navy of Britain, in the hope of at last over¬ 
powering it by numbers; and the day secretly fixed for 
making this requisition was the 1st of November. These 
secret articles were betrayed to the English cabinet, who 
at once took prompt and decisive measures to neutralize 
them. The power of most importance was Denmark, which, 
having now recovered from the disaster of Copenhagen, 
had a splendid fleet of upwards of sixty vessels ready for 
sea. Without losing a day the government despatched an 
overpowering military and naval force to the Baltic, to 
demand that the Danish fleet should be surrendered, not 
as captured, but merely as deposited with Great Britain, 
and to be restored by her on the conclusion of peace. The 
demand was met with a positive refusal, and, in conse¬ 
quence, the British army, under sir A. Wellesley, invested 
Copenhagen by a terrible bombardment, compelled the 
Danes to submit, and, at the beginning of October, the 
expedition returned to England with the whole Danish fleet, 
which, in consequence of the resistance of the city, was 
now considered the prize of the conquerors. 


A.D. 

1807. 


A.D. 

1807 - 

1808 . 


748 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

So violent a proceeding was of course laid hold of by 
the opposition, who declaimed eloquently against the viola¬ 
tion of the law of nations in thus attacking a power against 
whom war had not been declared. The ministers defended 
themselves by divulging the secret articles of the treaty of 
Tilsit; but, as it was impossible for them to reveal the source 
of their information, many professed to doubt its accuracy. 
At a later period, after the death of their informant, the 
minister of the day disclosed his name; but even now 
Napoleon’s own actions afforded a sufficient justification 
of the act. The day originally fixed for the demand to be 
made on Denmark and the other powers was the 1st of 
November; but his impatience for the prosecution of his 
designs against England was too great to allow him to 
wait till that time; and, on the 16th of August, the very 
same day that the British fleet arrived off Copenhagen, 
Napoleon publicly mentioned to the Danish minister at 
Paris that his ambassador at Copenhagen had already de¬ 
manded the co-operation of Denmark, and asked whether 
the demand had been complied with. His rage at the 
discomfiture of his plans was excessive. Though he com¬ 
pelled Russia to declare war against England, he saw, in 
effect, that the chief hopes which he had founded on the 
northern confederacy were dissipated, and he began to plan 
acquisitions in another quarter to make amends for his 
disappointment. 

CHAPTER LXVII. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

The acquisition of paramount power in the Peninsula had, 
ever since the time of Louis XIV., been a favourite object 
of the French court; and Napoleon carried these views 
further than any preceding ruler of that country. He was 
determined to make Spain a mere dependency upon France, 
and to divide Portugal between the two kingdoms. The 
Portuguese court had been unable to resist his demand of 
closing their harbours against English vessels, though they 
had refused to confiscate the property of English residents 
in Portugal; and Napoleon made this refusal a pretext for 
invading the country, and deposing the king, announcing, 
in an arrogant proclamation, that the house of Braganza 
had ceased to reign. Marshal Junot, at the head of a 







GEORGE III. 


749 


LX VII.] 

French army, crossed the frontier, and marched towards 
Lisbon; and, hopeless of arresting his progress, the prince 
regent, who governed the kingdom, in the name of the 
queen Maria, who had long been afflicted with insanity, 
determined on abandoning Europe, and seeking an asylum 
till the return of happier times, in his Transatlantic domi¬ 
nions of Brazil. In November, 1807, he, with the whole 
royal family of Portugal, quitted Lisbon; and a few days 
afterwards Junot entered that capital, and took formal 
possession of the whole kingdom. 

Still harder was the fate of the Spanish sovereign. A 
large army invaded his northern provinces, seized Pam- 
peluna by treachery, and advanced towards the capital. 
Charles IV., unpopular and despised, abdicated the throne 
in favour of his son, who, in March, 1808, was proclaimed 
king, by the title of Ferdinand VII., but who found himself 
a king without a kingdom. Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in- 
law, occupied Madrid; but the thing which Napoleon feared 
was, not that the Spaniards could resist his armies, but 
that the king, following the example of his Portuguese 
neighbours, might escape from his power. To obviate this 
danger he directed the French admiral at Cadiz to watch 
the seas carefully, but trusted more to the address of Savary, 
whom he sent as his minister to Madrid, and who worked 
on the weak mind of Ferdinand, till he persuaded him to 
go to Bayonne to confer with Napoleon, assuring him that 
the French emperor would be greatly flattered by such a 
mark of confidence. Ferdinand crossed the frontier, and 
found himself a prisoner. Murat partly persuaded and 
partly compelled Charles IV. to take a similar step; and 
Napoleon, having the whole Spanish royal family in his 
power, deposed them, and proclaimed his brother Joseph 
king of Spain* 

But the Spanish people had more resolution, and a higher 
sense of national honour than their rulers. At the news 
of the unworthy treatment of their princes, the populace 
at Madrid rose in insurrection against the French troops, 
and the atrocious cruelty with which Murat repressed it 
only excited a similar feeling in other cities. The whole 
country was violently excited. In some places the French 
were massacred; and, though Joseph was recognized by 
the Spanish notables, as the assembly of the principal 
nobles was called, which, in obedience to the mandate of 


A.D. 

1807 — 

1808 . 


A.D. 

1808. 


750 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

Napoleon, had met at Bayonne, yet it soon became very 
plain that their obedience to the usurper would find no 
response in the heart or conduct of the nation at large. 

The British government thought the rising in Spain 
afforded a great opening for fresh exertions on the Con¬ 
tinent. The opposition, led on this occasion by Sheridan, 
showed a patriotic eagerness to support them. Ample 
supplies of all kinds were furnished to the Spanish patriots; 
and, with the view of effecting a diversion in their favour, 
a strong force was sent to Portugal, under sir Arthur 
Wellesley. In the first week of August, 1808, he landed 
in Mondego Bay, about half way between Oporto and 
Lisbon, and at once commenced active operations. His 
force consisted of 10,000 men; but he expected to be 
joined by reinforcements, under general Spencer and sir 
John Moore. He gained a slight advantage over the 
Trench at Koleia; and, having already received two addi¬ 
tional brigades from England, marched, now at the head 
of 16,000 men, to meet Junot, who was advancing against 
him from Lisbon. On the 21st of August the two armies, 
of nearly equal numbers, met at Vimeira. The English 
had taken up a strong position, which the French attacked 
with their wonted gallantry, and with full confidence of 
victory; but they soon found that they had to deal with 
an enemy such as they had not of late encountered, and 
the British bayonet asserted its invariable superiority. 
After a long and fierce struggle they were beaten in every 
direction, and retired, leaving 2000 men dead on the field, 
and 400 prisoners, and a large portion of their artillery in 
the hands of the conquerors. 

This was the first battle in that famous peninsular contest 
that has crowned the military reputation of Gfreat Britain with 
undying glory. Wellesley was preparing to follow up his blow, 
and to convert the French defeat into a complete rout, w r hen 
he was arrested in his course by the orders of sir Harrv 
Burrard, an officer senior to himself, who arrived just before 
the battle. He was possessed of no abilities whatever; 
even before the battle he had interfered to prevent some of 
Wellesley’s projected operations, though he left the conduct 
of the fight itself to him; he was now alarmed at the 
boldness of his plans, and, in spite of sir Arthur’s most 
urgent representations, halted the army to wait for further 
reinforcements. He had hardly had time to do this mis- 




Lxvn *] GEORGE III. 751 

I 

chief before he was himself superseded by the arrival of 
sir Hew Dalrymple from Gibraltar. Sir Hew at once agreed 
to advance, though Junot had now had time to recover from 
his defeat, and to take up a strong position in front of 
Lisbon; but that marshal despaired of being able to main¬ 
tain his hold of that city, and sent to propose a conference, 
with a view to his evacuation of the whole of Portugal. 
The generals met at Cintra, and speedily agreed to condi¬ 
tions, by virtue of which the whole French army was to 
return to France, and the Russian fleet in the harbour of 
Lisbon was to be conducted to England, and restored to 
Russia at the conclusion of peace. 

The English people bad conceived such hopes from the 
victory of Vimeira, that they were very indignant at this 
treaty; and the conduct of the generals who agreed to it 
was made the subject of a military inquiry. They were 
acquitted of blame; indeed, after the mischief which had 
been done by sir Harry Burrard, it would seem that the 
terms of the convention were more favourable to us than 
could have been expected; and it certainly was no small 
advantage thus, by a single blow, to have delivered the 
whole kingdom of our allies from the grasp of the invader. 

Shortly after the conclusion of this convention, sir John 
Moore landed in the Peninsula with a large reinforcement; 
and, as the other generals had returned home to abide the result 
of the inquiry into their conduct, assumed the chief command ; 
and, at the head of 30,000 men, advanced into Spain. But 
the wretched character of the Spanish regular armies, which 
was not as yet understood in England, rendered this advance 
useless. Napoleon, who had come himself to the Peninsula 
to conduct the campaign, beat them in several battles, took 
Madrid, and then sent an overwhelming force against Moore, 
who was compelled to retreat towards Gallicia, in the har¬ 
bours of which province he expected to find transports. 
The army, which had exulted in its advance, was greatly 
dispirited by the retreat, the weather (it was now mid¬ 
winter) became very severe, the supplies fell short, and 
Soult, the most skilful of Napoleon’s marshals, was pressing 
on their rear with far superior numbers. As they proceeded 
towards the coast the roads became impassable, the baggage 
and artillery waggons were forced to be abandoned, disci¬ 
pline gave way under the pressure of these united distresses, 
and the British force diminished daily. {Still Moore kept 


A.D. 

If >08—- 
1809. 


752 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 


A.D. 

180 !). 


on his way, surmounting all the difficulties with unbroken 
resolution and admirable skill. In front of Lugo he took 
up a strong position and offered battle, which the French 
declined; and at last, in the second week of January, he 
arrived at Corunna, with an army diminished to half its 
numbers, and prepared to embark his army. Soult, how¬ 
ever, was not inclined to let him escape without making one 
effort for his destruction; and on the afternoon of the 16th, 
he attacked him with great impetuosity. The British army 
did not exceed. 14,000 men; the French amounted to 20,000, 
but they were repulsed on every point of attack, and the 
retreat in the presence of a superior army was relieved from 
some of its appearance of disaster by being concluded by a 
decided victory. Moore himself was killed, and Baird, the 
second in command, was severely wounded ; but the arrange¬ 
ments for the embarkation were carried out by general 
Hope, and the army returned to England. Still the govern¬ 
ment wisely considered that, in spite of the disasters of 
Moore’s army, the events of the last year, taken as a whole, 
proved the Peninsula to be the quarter most favourable to 
their attempts to check the increasing power of Napoleon, 
though those disasters were taken advantage of by the 
opposition to attack the ministry with great virulence, both 
for their past conduct and for their future plans; the chief 
speakers pronouncing any attempt to withstand the power 
of Napoleon in that country one that could only end in 
defeat and disgrace. Fortunately, however, for Britain, 
more patriotic and more manly counsels prevailed; and it 
was determined to send a fresh army to the Peninsula, 
and another to Holland to attack Antwerp. Unhap¬ 
pily, just when these operations were in preparation, the 
country was deprived of the services of the duke of York, 
who, as commander-in-chief, by his well-judged reforms and 
energetic administration had greatly contributed to the 
improved condition of the army; but who had been made 
a tool by some unworthy persons who had obtained an 
unfortunate influence over him, and who, through his too 
great facility of character, had obtained the means of dis¬ 
pensing some of his patronage in a way that caused great 
scandal. His conduct was made the subject of a parlia¬ 
mentary inquiry, and, although fully acquitted of any 
corrupt motive, he found it necessary to resign his situation, 
though he afterwards resumed it with the general consent 



LXVII.] GEORGE III. 753 

of all parties, when his successor, sir David Dundas, had 
proved wholly incompetent to discharge the duties of so 
important an office at so critical a time. Later in the year 
the ministry itself was broken up by an event scarcely less 
discreditable, a duel between two cabinet ministers, lord 
Castlereagh and Mr. Canning; the blame of the quarrel 
was at the time chiefly attributed to the intriguing ambition 
ol Canning, who, conscious of great abilities, desired to 
engross more power than belonged to his office; but in 
reality it was more properly imputable to the weakness of 
the duke of Portland, whose health had long been sinking, 
and who, in the hopes of saving himself trouble, prevailed 
on Canning, with whom he was connected by marriage, not 
to lay aside, but only to postpone his jealousy of his col¬ 
league. He now resigned as well as Castlereagh and Can¬ 
ning. The king wished to form a strong ministry by uniting 
the remainder of the present cabinet with the leaders of the 
opposition, but was met by the most peremptory refusal on 
the part of lord Grey and lord Grenville, who hoped by 
standing out to force themselves on him on their own terms, 
and in consequence Perceval became prime minister, lord 
Haw’kesbury war secretary, and lord Wellesley secretary 
for foreign affairs. 

Before the reinforcements destined for the Peninsula 
could arrive, our navy had inflicted another heavy blow on 
the enemy. A considerable Prench fleet, intended to attack 
our possessions in the West Indies, was lying in the Basque 
Roads, in front of Rochefort, and was blockaded there by a 
British squadron under lord Gambier. As there were no 
means of bringing the French to action, lord Cochrane, a 
captain in the navy, who had already given proofs of great 
skill and of the most daring valour, undertook to destroy 
them by fire-ships; forced his way into the harbour in spite 
of every obstacle that could be opposed to him; burnt 
some, drove others on shore, and, if he had been properly 
supported by the admiral, would have destroyed the whole 
fleet. The discontent caused by lord Gambier’s inactivity 
was so general that he was brought to a court-martial, 
though, as his conduct was not imputed to cowardice, he 
was acquitted. Cochrane was received at home with the 
highest honour, and though, at a subsequent period, his un¬ 
suspicious temper making him the tool of some dishonest 
men, involved him in great obloquy, he was mercifully 


A.D. 

1809. 


754 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. spared to see his innocence of the charges brought against 

t809. universally acknowledged, and still survives, deservedly 
honoured as the last, and almost the greatest, of that 
unequalled band of heroes who made Britain the mistress 
of the seas and the deliverer of the world. 

In the middle of April, 1809, sir Arthur Wellesley landed 
a second time in Portugal, bringing with him 13,000 men, 
which raised the entire amount of our troops in that coun¬ 
try to about 24,000. He at once marched northwards ; by 
a most skilful movement crossed the Douro in the face of 
Soult’s army, and compelled him to retire from Oporto so 
hastily that he himself sat down to the dinner which had 
been prepared for the French marshal. He followed up his 
advantage with untiring celerity, drove Soult from post to 
post, and compelled him to retire towards the coast of 
G-allicia, while he himself approached the capital of Spain, 
filling king Joseph with such alarm that he advanced with 
the divisions of the two marshals, Jourdan and Victor, to 
check his progress. On the 20th of July the two armies 
met at Talavera. The French had 50,000 men ; Wellesley 
had almost as many, but nearly two-thirds of his force were 
Spaniards, who were distrusted before the battle, and who, 
by their conduct in it, proved that no distrust could be 
equal to their misconduct. In artillery, also, the French had 
a great superiority. The battle lasted two days. On the 
first the French were repulsed with heavy loss; on the 
second they made vigorous efforts to retrieve their for¬ 
tune with equal ill success. After a stubborn conflict they 
retired from the field, having lost many more men than, 
the British, and leaving behind them also many of their guns 
and several hundred prisoners. 

The news of this important victory was received with 
great joy by the English government, and the victorious 
general was raised to the peerage by the title of Wellington, 
which he has since made more illustrious than any other 
which dignities the honoured roll of the English nobility. 
But he was not in a position at once to carry further the 
advantage which he had gained. His victory had brought 
around him fresh divisions of the vast French army which 
was occupying the different Spanish provinces. The Span¬ 
iards themselves were beaten in several encounters; 
after much consideration, he determined on retreating to 
the Portuguese frontier; and, in the autumn, he retired 




LXVII.] GEORGE HI. 755 

towards Badajoz, and took up his winter-quarters around 
that city. 

An expedition sent to Holland had a less fortunate issue. 
Antwerp was so defenceless that it would probably have 
been easily taken if the enterprise had been promptly 
executed as soon as it w r as decided on; but it was nearly 
the end of July before the expedition sailed. No such 
powerful armament had ever left the British shores. Above 
40,000 men were conveyed to the Dutch coast by a fleet 
doubling in numbers any that Nelson ever had under his 
command, with a vast train of artillery, and amply supplied 
with every description of supplies and military stores. But 
it was soon seen that of more importance than guns and 
supplies, and even than the numbers and courage of the 
common soldiers, is the genius of the commander, and no 
more incapable man than the general selected to be the 
leader in this great enterprise ever had such a charge 
entrusted to him. Lord Chatham was appointed to the 
command, it was believed, in consequence of the personal 
partiality of George III. for his family; and, if this was the 
case, the royal preferences never took a more unfortunate 
direction. If an epigram of his satirists could be implicitly 
trusted, all the time that lord Chatham was not eating he 
was sleeping, and all the time that he was not sleeping he 
was eating; but it is not by eating or sleeping that mighty 
deeds are performed in war. Instead of pushing on at once 
to Antwerp, he sat. down before Flushing. That town fell 
in a few days; but these few days had given time to the 
ever-active French (for another of Napoleon’s brothers, 
Louis, was king of Holland, and was supported on his 
usurped throne by some powerful French garrisons in the 
principal towns) ; and the French employee^ the time thus 
afforded them in putting Antwerp in such a state of defence 
that, when the British army at last arrived before it, they 
found it unassailable. The unhealthy Dutch marshes were 
already spreading disease among our troops, wFen, in an 
unhappy moment, Chatham determined on withdrawing a 
portion of his army into the island of Walcheren, while the 
rest returned home. The island marshes proved more 
pestilential than those on the continent, and at last the 
whole force was recalled, though not till they had lost half 
of their numbers from sickness, while many even of those 

3 c 2 


A.D. 

1809. 


HIST011Y OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

1809- 

1810 . 


756 


[CH. 


who survived had their constitutions permanently enfeebled 
by the searching character of the malady. 

The Walcheren losses and the retreat to Portugal again 
furnished materials for the reproaches and ill-omened pro¬ 
phecies of the opposition, who now added to their previous 
predictions of woe the bitterest denunciations of the want 
of skill exhibited by Wellington in crowning an useless 
victory with an inglorious retreat; and again, more ear¬ 
nestly than ever, did they press the withdrawal of our 
armies from the Peninsula. In the mean time Wellington 
had learned two lessons from the last campaign, to trust 
nothing to the Spaniards, and to place more confidence in 
the Portuguese troops, who, having been entrusted to the 
management of general Beresford, were speedily acquiring 
a steadiness of discipline which, added to their natural 
courage, eventually rendered them, to use the words of 
Wellington himself, not unworthy to combat side by side 
with British soldiers. 

Neither the government nor the parliament were deterred 
by the clamours of the opposition from prosecuting the war. 
The parliament voted the unprecedented sum of nearly 
90,000,000?. of money; and the ministry, trusting to 
Wellington’s assurances of ultimate success, supplied him 
with the means of retaining his hold upon Portugal, to 
which he, with a foresight showed at the time by no other 
person in Europe, but amply justified by the result, looked 
for the eventual deliverance of the whole Peninsula from 
foreign domination. During the whole of the year 1810 he 
was compelled, by his great inferiority in numbers, to keep 
on the defensive, unable to prevent Massena, who was now 
the Prench commander, from taking several of the strongest 
fortresses in t^e country, and being at length forced to 
retreat before his advancing host. But of this retreat he 
had long foreseen the necessity, and he had been construct¬ 
ing lines of fortifications on the heights of Torres Yedras, in 
front of Lisbon, which should be sufficient to contain his 
whole army, and to bar the further advance of the enemy. 
But before entering them he determined to strike one blow 
which should raise the courage both of his Portuguese allies 
and of the government at home, and with this view he took 
up a strong position on the high ground at Busaco, and 
offered battle, which Massena was forced to accept, though 









GEORGE III. 


757 


LXVTl.] 

the English commander had chosen his ground so well 
that, had it not been for the positive orders of Napoleon, 
Massena would have hesitated to attack him. He had 
upwards of 70,000 men; Wellington had 50,000, and of 
these nearly one-half were Portuguese who had never 
before been in action. Early on the 27th of Septem¬ 
ber the Erench infantry, led by Ney, the most intrepid 
of all the French marshals, began to ascend the steep 
path which led to one side of the British position, while a 
still more numerous force attacked it on the other side. 
The conflict was fierce; the troops of no nation surpass 
the French in the vivacity of their advance, and their leaders 
on this important day were men of rare firmness and 
resource in disaster ; but at length they were driven back 
in every direction with heavy loss, and then, with greater 
confidence than ever, Wellington withdrew his victorious 
troops within their impregnable lines to prepare, by well- 
earned rest, for the campaign of the ensuing year. 

At the same time that these great events were taking place 
abroad a state of things arose at home which, for a while, 
threatened important changes, though in the end it was at¬ 
tended with no practical consequences of any moment. The 
king, now seventy years of age, had lately lost his favourite 
daughter, the princess Amelia, and his grief preyed upon his 
mind so as to produce permanent insanity. The prince ol Wales 
was appointed regent, and the opposition confidently antici¬ 
pated their establishment as his ministers. Their expectations 
were confirmed when the prince entrusted to lord Grenville 
and lord Grey the office of drawing up his answer to the 
address of the two houses of parliament, requesting him to 
undertake the government of the kingdom; but from the 
high tone which they took about some trifling matters he 
perceived, or fancied he perceived that they thought him in 
their power; he was further alienated from them by the 
opinion which lord Grenville entertained of the propriety of 
imposing restrictions on his exercise of the royal authority, 
and by the favour with which both Grenville and Grey re¬ 
garded the emancipation of the Eoman Catholics, to which 
he himself was firmly opposed; and at length he decided on 
retaining Mr. Perceval in his office. 

Before Christmas Massena had retired from Torres Vedras, 
as far as Santarem, where Wellington watched him with 
such vigilance that, in spite of his superiority in numbers, 


A.D. 

1810— 

1811. 


758 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. he was unable to cross the Tagus. He lay at Santarem till 
18l °— the beginning of March, when, hearing that Wellington had 
* 811, received considerable reinforcements, he broke up his camp 
and began to retreat rapidly towards the Spanish frontier. 
He had hardly commenced his march when he heard of a 
severe disaster which had befallen his countrymen at Bar- 
rosa, near Cadiz, where, in spite of the most disgraceful 
cowardice on .the part of the Spanish troops, sir Thomas 
Graham, with less than 5000 men, had completely beaten 
double his numbers under Victor. Massena conducted the 
retreat with the most consummate skill, stained, however, 
with the most savage cruelty towards the natives of the 
country. With equal skill and with untiring energy Wel¬ 
lington pressed his retreating columns, cutting off stragglers 
and defeating him in more than one skirmish. Close to the 
Spanish frontier stands the town of Almeida, which the French 
had taken at the end of 1809, and into which Massena had 
lately thrown a strong garrison. Wellington, when he 
reached it, immediately invested it, and Massena, eager to 
preserve it, turned on his steps to attack his pursuers. 
Around the village of Fuentes d’Onore (“the fountain of 
honour” is the English translation of its appropriate name) a 
terrible contest took place. The French nearly doubled the 
British in numbers, and so terrible was their onset that they 
nearly gained a victory, which would have been attended with 
the most perilous consequences to the whole of the vanquished 
army; but the ever-fertile skill of the British general and 
the ever-dauntless courage of his troops prevented such a 
disaster, and after two days’ stubborn fighting, carried on 
with equal fortune, Massena withdrew his troops, and left 
the beleaguered city to its fate. 

The year 1811 was marked by no great advantage gained 
on either side. Wellington maintained his ground, though 
he was hampered by unexampled difficulties, owing to the 
impossibility of obtaining adequate supplies, especially of 
money, which were not, or perhaps could not be sent in suf¬ 
ficient quantities. Still, eager to keep up the confidence of 
the Portuguese, and to inspire the Spaniards with some of 
their courage, he crossed the Spanish border, and at the 
end of May laid siege to Badajoz, the strongest fortress in 
the province of Estremadura. Before his arrival Beresford, 
at the head of 30,000 British, Portuguese, and Spaniards, 
had invested it, and compelled Soult to march to its relief. 




GEORGE III. 


759 


LXVII.] 

On the 16th of May the two armies fought the terrible 
battle of Albuera; in which, after both had suffered a loss 
unparalleled, if the number of the combatants on each side be 
considered, the French were at last worsted, and compelled 
to retreat. Soon afterwards Wellington himself arrived, 
and, as has been said above, renewed the siege of Badajoz, 
but without success; such large armies were approaching 
from different quarters for its relief that, after a few days’ 
firing he was compelled to endeavour to carry it by assault 
before they could arrive; the breaches were slight, and 
were defended with the most undaunted courage, and with 
every resource of the most inventive ingenuity by general 
Philipon, the governor, while the British attempted to 
storm them, but each time they were repulsed, and, at the 
end of twelve days, Wellington raised the siege, and re¬ 
treated into Portugal. He soon moved northwards, again 
crossed the borders, in hopes to be able surprise Ciudad Bodri- 
go, in Leon ; but the French force, under marshal Marmont, 
was too strong to render it safe to make the attempt, and, 
after the two armies had lain for some time in the imme¬ 
diate neighbourhood of each other with no other result than 
a skirmish or two, in which the English gained the advantage, 
they both retired into winter-quarters. 

Hitherto Wellington had maintained his ground with 
admirable skill and courage in spite of more difficulties than 
ever surrounded a British general. He was inadequately 
supported by the ministry ; his every movement was inces¬ 
santly criticized and condemned by the opposition; of his 
allies the Portuguese alone were trustworthy, for the 
Spaniards robbed his army while in safety and deserted it 
when in danger: still he had saved Portugal from subjuga¬ 
tion, though he had not as yet been able to effect any thing 
for the deliverance of Spain. But, in the winter of 1811, he 
received considerable reinforcements, and, at the beginning 
of the next year, he commenced his onward course of victory 
which was never afterwards arrested. He had never lost 
sight of Ciudad Eodrigo, and, finding early in January that 
the French armies were at some distance from that most 
important fortress, he suddenly appeared with a strong force 
under its walls, having first distracted the attention of the 
enemy by a series of movements in the south of Portugal, 
which he entrusted to general Hill. Ciudad Eodrigo was 
not only a place of great strength, but it was also one of 


A.D. 
1811 — 
1812 . 


760 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.r>. great importance, as it contained the chief stores of the 

1812. French army. It was evident that its reduction must be 
effected with great rapidity, before Marmont could arrive to its 
relief; and, accordingly, Wellington pressed the siege with 
an energy never surpassed. On the 8th of January the 
British troops first arrived in sight of the place; from that 
day the attack was carried on with ceaseless fury ; a power¬ 
ful train battered the walls day and night, but the courage 
of the besieged did not diminish, their artillery was more 
numerous than that of their assailants, their ingenuity and 
perseverance in repairing the damage done inexhaustible. 
By the 19th two small breaches were made, and that night, 
in spite of the most fearful obstacles, they were stormed 
and the town was taken. Our loss was very great: two 
generals, Mackinnon and Crawford, were slain, and 1300 
gallant soldiers were killed or wounded in that terrible as¬ 
sault. But the prize was of immense value, not 'merely on 
account of the prisoners, or of the vast supplies which fell 
into the hands of the captors, but from the evidence it gave, 
both to friends and foes, of the resistless energy of the 
British general and of his troops. 

The French marshals were astonished at the brief time 
which Wellington had required to achieve so vast a success. 
Napoleon was furious, and reproached them bitterly with 
their want of vigour. Still greater cause for astonishment 
and displeasure was preparing for them : with no more delay 
than was necessary to put the taken fortress in a state of 
defence, Wellington turned to the south to repeat a similar 
achievement at Badajoz. With great celerity and secrecy, 
the battering train was transported to Estremadura, and on 
the 17th of March that fortress too was invested. It had 
proved too strong for a sudden assault in the preceding year ; 
it was far stronger now, for Philipon had occupied the 
intervening time in adding to its defences in every possible 
manner; it was amply victualled, it was held by a dauntless 
garrison of 5000 men; yet speed was as indispensable to 
success as before, for Soult was approaching, with an army 
greatly superior to ours, to relieve it. On the 27th it was 
stormed and carried. No horrors ever surpassed those which 
the English regiments surmounted on that terrible night. 
Some were crushed by vast logs and stones descending on their 
heads, some fell into pitfalls and were suffocated, others were 
drowned in the deep wide fosse which yawned beneath the 







GEORGE III. 


761 


LXVII.] 

breach; many fell covered with wounds, rushing, or being 
pushed by their comrades from behind, on beams thickly 
studded with sword-blades, and firmly fixed in the gaps in 
the walls; many were blown up by mines, many were man¬ 
gled by the shells and grape which fell in ceaseless torrents 
among their dense ranks. The next day it was found that 
in that brief hour 3500 brave men had been struck down; 
but the town was won, and a safe path was opened for the 
conqueror and his army into the heart of Spain. 

He proceeded to avail himself of it, though it was still a 
path beset with dangers of no ordinary kind. His whole 
army did not amount to 60,000 men, while nearly five times 
that number of French soldiers occupied the different pro¬ 
vinces of the Peninsula; and his comparatively scanty force 
was in constant want of supplies, from the treachery and 
corruption of the Spanish authorities, who undertook to 
furnish them. The common people of Spain were enthu¬ 
siastic in their opposition to the French, and more so than 
ever when it became known that Napoleon meditated the 
dismemberment of their country, and the annexation of the 
northern provinces to France: but their leaders were the 
most contemptible men who ever influenced the destinies of 
a nation; adding to all their other bad qualities a jealousy 
of the English general, which made them apparently triumph 
in showing their disregard of his advice, and in thwarting 
his combinations. 

In spite, however, of all difficulties, "Wellington advanced 
into Spain, proceeding northwards in order to act upon the 
French lines of communication between Bayonne and Madrid. 
In the middle of June he reached Salamanca, with about 
40,000 men, took the forts which the French had erected to 
command the town, and then prepared to measure himself 
with Marmont, who was retreating before him in order to 
effect a junction with other divisions, which should give him 
a superiority in numbers. By the first week in July the 
French marshal had succeeded in this object, and finding him¬ 
self now in command of 45,000 men, he assumed the offensive, 
in the hopes of cutting Wellington off from his line of commu¬ 
nication with the other division of his army, which was still to 
the southward, under general Hill. Marmont was reckoned 
by Napoleon one of the ablest tacticians in the French army, 
and his manoeuvres now were executed with great skill and 
celerity. For some days the two armies were marching in 


A.D. 

1812. 


762 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. parallel lines within a very short distance of each other, 

1812. w hile each general was watching for any mistake of his 
antagonist. At last, on the 21st of July, Marmont, endea¬ 
vouring to increase an advantage which he fancied he had 
gained, left a gap in his battalions; Wellington, exclaiming 
with delight that the French were lost, was upon them in a 
moment. Surprised and taken at fearful disadvantage as the 
French were, they still fought with the most intrepid gal¬ 
lantry ; yet never had so brave an army been so completely 
beaten in so short a time. It was late in the afternoon 
when the British attack commenced; evening had hardly 
begun when the French were in full retreat, with their 
commander severely wounded, leaving above 7000 men 
prisoners in the hands of the English, while the killed and 
wounded nearly doubled that number. Had not a Spanish 
regiment, to which had been entrusted a fort commanding 
the fords of the river Tormes, betrayed their trust, and, by 
evacuating their post, left the enemy an undisputed passage 
across that river, that whole French army would have been 
utterly destroyed. 

The conqueror pushed on for Madrid ; king Joseph retired 
at his approach, and the British army entered the capital of 
Spain amid the acclamations of the citizens, who had long 
been writhing under the oppression and extortion of the 
French, almost without a hope of deliverance, and whose 
exultation was now proportioned to their previous despair. 
But Wellington could not afford to waste time in idle 
triumph, and soon hastened to the north to attack Burgos, 
the capital of Leon. ■ It was a strong city, and he was un¬ 
provided with heavy artillery to batter the walls ; but he had 
heard that the garrison were ill supplied with water, and that 
their magazines were so situated as to be easily burnt. The 
hopes founded on this information failed; the French gene¬ 
rals were advancing in overpowering numbers to relieve the 
place, and, after a month spent in ineffectual attempts, 
Wellington raised the siege, and again retreated towards 
the Portuguese frontier. For some days the army suffered 
great distress from want of supplies, and its discipline, in 
consequence, became relaxed to a degree which provoked the 
most severe reproof from its general. The French pursued 
him with nearly double his numbers, but were unable to 
gain the slightest advantage over him, and at the end of 
November both armies went into winter-quarters. 






GEORGE III. 


763 


LXVII.] 

At the same time that the British troops were reaping 
these laurels in the south of Europe, the country was relieved 
from her enemies in the north by the insatiable ambition of 
Napoleon, whose unprovoked aggressions now drove Sweden 
and Russia to make peace with England; he himself, at the 
head of the most enormous army ever seen, was approaching 
the Russian frontiers, at the same time that Wellington was 
advancing towards Salamanca ; and when the British army 
was beginning to enjoy its well-earned rest on the banks of 
the Coa, he was hastening back from the relics of his de¬ 
stroyed army, to punish a conspiracy which had nearly 
hurled him from his throne in his absence. 

At home the ministry had been slightly changed: first, 
by the resignation of lord Wellesley, who was dissatisfied 
with the inefficient support afforded by his colleagues to 
his brother, and who was replaced by lord Castlereagh ; and, 
secondly, by the death of Mr. Perceval, who was assassinated 
in May by a man of the name of Bellingham. This sad 
event threatened to break up the ministry altogether; as 
lord Wellesley, lord Moira, lord Grey, and lord Gren¬ 
ville were successively negotiated with by the prince regent, 
who, in accordance with the wish strongly expressed by 
the parliament, was desirous to form a strong administra¬ 
tion by the union of the ablest men of all parties; but 
difficulties arose respecting the prosecution of the war, 
respecting the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and, 
at last, respecting the officers of the household, till, in the 
end, the former ministry was re-established, with lord 
Liverpool at its head, Mr. Vansittart as chancellor of the 
exchequer, lord Bathurst secretary of state for war, and 
the colonies; while a rising young man, who afterwards 
rose to great eminence, Mr. Peel, began his official life as 
secretary for Ireland. 

Singularly enough the country derived benefit from the 
loss to the government of its ablest councillor; for lord 
Wellesley, having now joined the opposition, changed its 
previous attacks on the war into reproaches of the ministry 
for not prosecuting it with sufficient vigour; and, in con¬ 
sequence, the ministry took courage, obtained enormous 
supplies from parliament, and sent large reinforcements to 
Wellington. At the same time his great achievements in 
the last year had induced the Spanish cortes to appoint 
him commander-in-chief of their army also, so that he was 


A.D. 

1812. 


764 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. in less danger than before of finding his plans counteracted 
1812 — py ^fie obstinacy of the Spanish generals. He was not a 
man to neglect these advantages; but, the moment that 
the severity of the winter was passed, he broke up from 
his cantonments, and, having distributed strong divisions 
of his combined army in different parts of the Peninsula, 
marched with the main body, consisting of 75,000 men, 
towards the Pyrenees, with the expectation of thus com¬ 
pelling the French to evacuate Spain by possessing himself 
of their entire line of communication with France. So ably 
were his movements arranged, that the enemy were forced 
to make a rapid retreat, abandoning several of their strongest 
positions and most important fortresses without striking a 
blow. He pursued them with untiring rapidity; and, at 
last, on the 20th of June, he overtook them in the narrow 
plain of Yittoria, in the province of Biscay. Joseph him¬ 
self, with the veteran marshal Jourdan as his lieutenant, 
commanded the French army, which was nearly equal in 
numbers to the British and Spanish host, each force num¬ 
bering nearly 80,000 men. The French had had the choice 
of their position, and at length stood firm in order of battle. 
The next morning Wellington attacked them. It is needless 
for an unmilitary writer to attempt a detail of manoeuvres 
of which he cannot appreciate the importance, and which 
lie can hardly hope to make intelligible to his readers; 
and it is the more unnecessary with respect to the exploits 
of Wellington, because they are minutely recorded in the 
most eloquent history of a war ever penned, by one who 
himself bore an active part in many of the achievements 
which he relates. The battle lasted nearly the whole day. 
The French, as usual, fought bravely, and their artillery 
was greatly superior both in number and weight of metal 
to that of the English; but their line was forced in some 
parts, and turned at others, and at last the whole of their 
army was driven in most disorderly retreat from the field. 
The number who fell in both armies was not very unequal, 
and the prisoners were few; but the whole of the French 
artillery, baggage, military stores, with the treasure-chest 
of the army, containing above a million of money, fell into 
the hands of the conquerors. Jourdan even lost his marshal’s 
baton, which Wellington sent as a trophy to the prince regent, 
and received in its stead that of an English marshal, rarely 
bestowed, and which had never been so earned before. 





LXVII.] GEORGE III. 765 

No such singular sight had ever been witnessed in war 
as was exhibited in the victorious camp that night. The 
French army was accompanied by great numbers of ladies, 
who, amid the horrors of war, had indulged in every kind 
of fantastic luxury. Their baggage also was among the 
spoils; and at night there might be seen frolicking about 
the camp, in the exultation of their unparalleled victorv, 
common soldiers in various disguises, or unwonted em¬ 
ployments. Some were arrayed in silks and satins, others 
had exchanged their schakos for turbans or feathers; some 
were playing with lapdogs, or pet monkeys, others were 
teaching parrots to exchange their French ejaculations for 
English household words of equal nationality; some were 
revelling in claret and champagne, and others, who, with 
more business-like taste, had been pillaging the money- 
chest (which Wellington had abandoned to them, saying 
that they deserved it all), were staggering to their quarters 
under a vast weight of dollars, and bartering them at a 
most disproportionate price for more portable gold pieces. 

Wellington allowed his beaten enemies no time to recover 
from their discomfiture. It was in vain that Napoleon 
sent Soult, the most skilful of all his marshals, to arrest 
his progress. He pressed on to the Pyrenees, took the 
almost impregnable fortresses of St. Sebastian and Pam- 
peluna, defeated Soult in more than one battle, and (in 
spite of the incompetency displayed by some of the sub¬ 
ordinate English generals in Catalonia) drove him from 
one position after another into the Pyrenees, and by the 
first week in October crossed the Bidassoa, and stood, with 
his victorious army, the first invaders of the soil of France 
since Napoleon had had the direction of her energies. 

As the Spaniards’ fear of the French diminished their 
jealousy of the English returned, and they again began to 
throw such obstacles in the way of all Wellington’s designs, 
that he resigned his office of generalissimo of their armies, 
and was with difficulty prevailed upon to resume it. His 
letters and despatches present a lively picture of the 
unparalleled difficulties with which their vanity and faith¬ 
lessness surrounded him, and which he only surmounted 
by an union of firmness, good temper, and judgment, more 
truly admirable than even his military genius. 

Even a Pyrenean winter brought but little respite to 
the contending armies. The terrible state of the roads 


A.D. 

1813. 


766 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


A.D. 

] 813— 
1814. 


[CH. 


retarded the progress of the English general, who, how¬ 
ever, went on steadily, though slowly. In vain Sonlt oflered 
battle on every available spot. Defeat after defeat com¬ 
pelled him to retire before his conqueror. Wellington 
crossed the Adour, a wide and deep river, which flows 
into the sea beneath the walls of Bayonne, beat him again 
at Orthez, and, detaching a division to occupy Bourdeaux, 
pursued him without intermission wflth the rest of ‘the 
army, and, by the beginning of March, 1814, had driven 
him to Toulouse. So admirable was the discipline which 
Wellington’s firmness had established in his army, that no 
complaints were heard of any of the natives being wronged 
by his soldiers in even the slightest degree; and in con¬ 
sequence they, contrasting the treatment which they re¬ 
ceived from the invaders with the severe exactions of 
Napoleon and his officers, cheerfully supplied the British 
camp with provisions, which their own countrymen could 
only procure with great difficulty. 

The two armies lay in front of one another at Toulouse 
for nearly a month, being separated by the Garonne, which 
was too much swollen by floods to make it practicable to 
transport an army across it. In the beginning of April 
the waters subsided, the British army crossed the river, 
and on the 10th of April attacked the enemy. Welling¬ 
ton’s forces were superior in numbers ; but a large division 
consisted of Spaniards, on whom no reliance could be placed, 
and Soult had the advantage of a very strong position. 
After a long and stubborn contest the Erench were beaten 
on every point, and compelled to retreat, and the next 
day to evacuate the city, which being important from its 
central positiou, would have rendered the victory one of 
great consequence in the event of any subsequent military 
operations. 

But the war was over. Some days before the battle 
the allied Russian, Austrian, and Prussian army had taken 
Paris, Napoleon had been dethroned by a formal decree of 
the Erench senate, and, on the 11th of April, he himself 
had signed a treaty with the allied sovereigns at Paris, by 
which he exchanged the Erench crown for that of Elba, 
a small island off the coast of Tuscany. Erom the moment 
that Wellington had entered Prance the party among the 
Erench still attached to the Bourbons had made no secret 
of their hopes of a restoration. Many of the citizens of 





GEORGE III. 


767 


LXVIII.] 

Bourdeaux had assumed the white cockade, the emblem 
of the exiled family ; and in February the duke d’Angouleme 
-had come in person to Wellington’s camp, and had endea¬ 
voured to persuade him to declare in favour of Louis XVIII. 
The British general of course abstained from any such step, 
hut saw, no doubt, with satisfaction, the feeling in favour 
of it among the inhabitants of the district, and reported it 
to his government, as affording a certain prospect of a 
speedy end to the war. 

Lord Castlereagh, who was present with the allied armies 
as the British plenipotentiary, and who, by his prompt 
decision of character, and uniformly fearless counsels, had 
contributed very greatly to the success of the campaign 
in the north of France, was not informed of the esta¬ 
blishment of Napoleon at Elba (which was the work of 
the emperor Alexander of Russia) in time to prevent it; 
but he protested against it, and at once predicted the mis¬ 
chiefs which eventually arose from so ill-advised a measure. 
He also abstained from interfering in the choice of the new 
government, which was to be established in France, wisely 
alleging that the only way to render the restored dynasty 
acceptable to the nation was to let its restoration be the 
nation’s own work. 

The return of peace was hailed with great delight in this 
country. The emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, with 
many of the generals most distinguished in the recent 
campaigns, visited England, and were received with an 
enthusiasm which pervaded all classes, who forgot the 
horrors and distresses of the longest war that had desolated 
Europe for two centuries in the unexampled triumphs with 
which it had been concluded, and in their anticipation ol a 
long enjoyment of the blessings of peace. 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

Not that England had yet obtained universal peace; on 
the contrary, a war was still raging in North America 
which had been carried on for the last two years with the 
United States, but which has not been mentioned hitherto, 
in order to avoid interrupting the narrative of the struggle 
against France, and also because the operations on both 


A.D. 

1814. 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


768 


[CH. 


A.D. 
1811 — 
1814. 


sides were in general of too trivial a character to excite any 
very deep interest. 

It had been caused by the ill feeling engendered in the. 
United States, partly by the restrictions which we had placed 
on the trade with neutral powers in opposition to Napoleon’s 
Berlin decrees, and partly by the right of searching American 
vessels for deserters, which we claimed and exercised, often 
in spite of the most determined resistance. Some influence, 
too, must probably be attributed to the good will which the 
Americans had cherished for France ever since their revolu¬ 
tion, and for their consequent sympathy with that nation 
in her contest with us. These grounds of difference were 
inflamed by one or two accidental collisions between 
English and American vessels ; and at last, after long nego¬ 
tiation, in June, 1812, the Americans declared war against 
England. Their means of injuring us were limited to incur¬ 
sions on our Canadian possessions, and to attacks made by 
single cruisers on our frigates and mercantile marine. Their 
invasions of Canada, though often repeated, were productive 
of nothing but disaster to themselves, being repelled by the 
governor, sir George Prevost, with great courage and pru¬ 
dence ; but in their contests on the sea they had at first 
better success, from the fact of their frigates being much 
larger than ours, and armed with guns of a much more 
powerful calibre. The naval war was also carried on partly 
on the great frontier lakes Ontario and Erie with a success 
which, though at times varied, on the whole inclined to the 
American side. 

At last, when the termination of the war with France 
placed larger resources at the command of the English 
ministers, several of Wellington’s best regiments were sent 
to America, and we prepared for more vigorous operations. 
One force, under general Ross, defeated a much larger army 
at Bladensburg, took Washington, and, by the command of 
the ministers, destroyed not only the vast military stores 
which had beeu accumulated in that city, but all the public 
buildings, including even the senate-house and the house of 
representatives. Such an unprecedented aggravation of the 
unavoidable horrors of war is not creditable to the ministers 
who ordered it, and injured the cause of Britain by impelling 
the Americans to a most obstinate resistance in defence of 
other towns which were attacked. Ross himself was shortly 
afterwards killed in a skirmish in. front of Baltimore, and 




LXVI1I.] GEORGE III. 709 

his successor, colonel Brooke, found that city so strongly 
defended that he could not venture to assault it; while sir 
Edward Pakenham, who with 6000 men ventured to attack 
an army of double his numbers, drawn up in defence of 
New Orleans under general Jackson, was repelled with 
considerable slaughter, he himself was slain, and the second 
and third generals in command were severely wounded. 

Negotiations for peace, however, had been going on for 
some time at Ghent, where the British and American pleni¬ 
potentiaries had met, and in December, 1814, peace was 
concluded, some of the matters in dispute being referred to 
the arbitration of the emperor of Russia, and others, such as 
the right of search, passed over in discreet silence. 

But peace was hardly established abroad before it was in 
danger of being interrupted at home by a very general 
feeling of discontent at the new corn-law. The price of 
corn had been a frequent subject of consideration in parlia¬ 
ment, which had attempted to regulate it by different laws, 
some promoting the exportation of grain, and even encourag¬ 
ing it by a bounty; while others alternately prohibited 
exportation and importation, or permitted them on payment 
of a duty, which varied with the existing price, the object 
of these various enactments being to secure the corn- 
grower a price which should remunerate him for his labour, 
and to protect the corn-consumer from having to pay too 
much for an article of such vital necessity. Whether it 
was the consequence of these laws or not it may be hard to 
say, but for the century and a half preceding the Erench 
revolution the price of corn had been steadier than that of 
most articles, the supply of which depends upon the seasons ; 
but the war had raised that price in a most exorbitant 
degree, and during the last year or two grain of all sorts 
had been far dearer than they had ever been known to be 
before. The people now eagerly anticipated a return to the 
old prices; but the government were alarmed lest so great 
an alteration should produce a derangement of trade, and 
proposed a new law, by which for the future corn was to be 
imported on payment of a duty varying with the existing price, 
but which imposed a tax amounting to an absolute prohi¬ 
bition of importation, till wheat rose to a price considerably 
above the highest amount attained by it before 1790. The 
populace in general was greatly excited by a measure which 
they considered must at all times greatly raise the price of 

3 D 


A.D. 
1814— 

1815. 


A.D. 

1815. 


770 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

their most indispensable article of food. Terrible riots took 
place in many towns, and in London the mob attacked the 
bouse of the lord chancellor, whom they believed favourable 
to it, and would probably have murdered him had he not 
been rescued by the soldiers. 

All divisions at home, however, were suddenly terminated 
by an event which united all hearts in the defence of the 
liberties of Europe. On the 1st of March Napoleon had 
landed in France, near Cannes, with a small body of soldiers, 
and at once began his march into the interior of the coun¬ 
try, being received with great enthusiasm by the inhabitants 
of the mountain district through which he passed, and being 
joined by several bodies of troops, and by several great 
officers, even by some, like Ney, who had taken the com¬ 
mand of a force sent expressly to arrest his progress, while 
Louis XVIII. fled from Paris to Holland, and awaited the 
course of events at Ghent. 

The ministers of the different allied sovereigns were at 
Vienna arranging the different questions which had arisen 
on the conclusion of the war, when the news of Napoleon’s 
invasion of France arrived in that city. They at once pro¬ 
claimed him the public enemy of Europe, and arranged the 
proportions in which each state should provide armies to 
crush his enterprise. He had met with great success in 
raising a force which was ready for operations by the 
beginning of June. The allies had been equally rapid in 
their movements; and by the same period Blucher with a 
fine Prussian army, and the duke of Wellington with a 
force of British, Germans, and Belgians, were on the fron¬ 
tiers of Belgium, ready to encounter him as soon as his plan 
of operations could be ascertained. 

On the 7th of June Napoleon left Paris, in order, to use 
his own expression, to measure himself with Wellington. 
That general had about 75,000 men under his orders, and 
Blucher, wfio was co-operating with him, had 100,000. 
Napoleon’s army consisted of 130,000 soldiers, nearly all 
the tried veterans of his former campaigns. On the 15th of 
June he crossed the Belgian frontier near Eleurus, and the 
briefest and most decisive war which the history of the 
world records began. 

It was late in the afternoon of that day that news reached 
the duke of Wellington at Brussels of the approach of the 
French emperor. He and all his chief officers were pre- 





GEORGE III. 


771 


LX VIII.] 

paring to attend a ball to be given by the ducbess of Rich¬ 
mond ; and, desiring to avoid giving alarm to the citizens, 
he still appeared there at the head of his staff, quitting the 
entertainment before midnight, and marching at the head of 
his army to the threatened point of attack. Blucher, who 
had received intelligence of Napoleon’s advance some hours 
earlier, had already concentrated his forces at Ligny; and 
"Wellington now advanced with all speed to Quatre Bras, 
a place parallel to Blucher’s position, where the four roads 
from Brussels, Charleroi, Namur, and Nivelles meet. On 
the 16th Napoleon, with the larger half of his army, fell 
upon Blucher, while Ney, wdth the rest, was sent to Quatre 
Bras in order to anticipate Wellington in the occupation of 
that important post. After a tremendous conflict, in which 
the Prussians exhibited the most obstinate courage, they 
were at last driven back with severe loss, and compelled to 
retreat on Wavre. The British army had better fortune, or 
rather was led with greater skill. Only a small portion of 
their whole army had reached Quatre Bras when Ney 
attacked them with a force only slightly superior in num¬ 
bers, but far more powerful in artillery and in cavalry, while 
Wellington’s horse consisted chiefly of Belgians, who, as 
usual, ran away at the first shot: but the superiority of the 
French marshal availed him nothing. After a long struggle 
he was repelled at every point, and forced to draw off from 
the field of battle, though Wellington also fell back when he 
heard of Blucher’s retreat to Wavre, and took up a fresh 
position at Waterloo, from whence he sent word to Blucher 
that he proposed to give battle to the French, provided he 
would support him with two corps of Prussians. Blucher, 
who, however he might be defeated, was always ready to 
renew the combat, promised him the aid, not of two corps, 
but of his whole army. 

Napoleon now, in person, took the command of the 
troops intended to act against the British, leaving Grouchy 
at the head of a division which he expected would prove 
sufficient to keep the Prussians in check; failing, fatally for 
himself, to do justice to the indomitable courage of the old 
Prussian marshal. Wellington conducted the retreat of his 
army with consummate skill, not only giving the French 
no opportunity of inflicting any injury upon liim, but even 
gaining some advantage over the squadrons which, too pre¬ 
sumptuously, pressed upon his rear. The weather was very 

3 u 2 


A.D. 

1815. 



772 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. unfavourable; heavy rains broke up the roads, and wet the 

1815. troops to the skin; but they marched on in unbroken order, 
looking with eager hearts for the combat of the morrow; 
and, early in the afternoon, took up the positions which 
each battalion was to occupy in the fight. 

The French did not reach their ground till later in the 
day; they, as well as their commander, were full of confi¬ 
dence, fearing nothing so much as that the British should 
continue their retreat during the night; and great was the 
exultation of both general and army when the morning light 
showed them their foes still in their front. “ At last then,” 
said Napoleon, “ at last I have them, these English.” They 
were the last words of boastfulness and confidence that ever 
passed the lips to which a long series of unparalleled 
triumphs had made confidence natural, and boasting itself 
scarcely ungraceful. 

It was the 18th of June ; the rain had ceased, but a heavy 
leaden sky overhung both armies while their leaders made their 
final dispositions for the battle on which the eyes of the whole 
world were turned, and which everv circumstance combined 
to invest with unparalleled interest. The armies were of 
the first magnitude, amply supplied with all the means and 
appliances of warfare; the field of battle was extensive and 
open, affording but slight advantage to either side; the 
stake was the throne of France, and the tranquillity of 
Europe. What, perhaps, above all things attracted the 
minds of men, was the renown of the antagonist generals. 
The French chief had won his way from the humblest posi¬ 
tion to an imperial crown by his military genius; at one 
time or another he had subdued every nation, and taken 
every metropolis on the continent of Europe. He had not 
been always victorious, but, except when overpowered by 
numbers, he had never suffered decisive defeat; while the 
vastness of his combinations, the energy and rapidity of his 
operations, gave evidence of a genius far superior to that of 
the most successful of his previous adversaries. He had 
been driven from his throne by overpowering hosts, he had 
been borne back to it on the shoulders of his army, under 
circumstances resembling romance rather than reality, and 
lie was now leading on the flower of that army, veterans 
whose fidelity and courage he had proved in many a hard- 
fought campaign and many a glorious victory, and who now 
burnt with eagerness to fix him, even though it should be 





LXVIII.] GEORGE IIT. 773 

at'the cost of their own lives, firmly on the throne on which 
they had so lately placed him. 

The English commander also owed his proud position 
solely to his own genius, proved over every description of 
troops in every variety of climate. Being a subject, fettered 
by the orders of his government, he had had no opportunity 
for such dazzling achievements as those by which the French 
emperor, in the absoluteness of his authority, had amazed 
the world; but his exploits, when fairly weighed, were such 
as might well be put on a par with those of his antagonist. 
He had conquered on the burning sands of India, on the 
frozen shores of the Baltic; though greatly outnumbered, he 
bad maintained his ground for years against Napoleon’s 
choicest troops and ablest marshals, every one of whom that 
was ever opposed to him had been signally defeated. He 
had expelled the French eagles from Portugal and from 
Spain; he had given them more than one bloody defeat on 
their own ground; and now Junot, and Jourdan, and 
Massena, and Ney, and Marmont, and Soult, having all 
proved alike unequal to the contest with him, he was about 
to measure his skill with him whom they all acknowledged 
for their master. 

The French army consisted of rather more than 70,000 
men, and 250 guns. The English army was smaller by 
4000 men, and its artillery was little more than half as 
numerous as that of the enemy. But the disparity in the 
quality of the troops was far more considerable than that in 
their numbers. Napoleon’s were all French; fiery, daunt¬ 
less, intelligent veterans: of Wellington’s force scarcely 
more than one-third were British, and of those British 
many had never yet seen a gun fired; for the flower of his 
peninsular army had been sent to America, and, though the 
war there was over, were still in that country. The re¬ 
mainder was made up of Germans, Hanoverians, and Bruus- 
wickers, good troops, but, by the admission of Napoleon 
himself, very inferior to British soldiers, and of upwards 
of 17,000 Belgians, who had behaved ill in every battle, and 
who never behaved so ill as on this day. The battle-field 
itself was a narrow valley between two undulating ridges 
of moderate height, not quite a mile apart; that on which 
the British line stood was strengthened on its extreme right 
by a small country house, called Hougoumont, surrounded 
by garden walls, and covered in front by an orchard and a 


a.D. 

1815. 


774 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. small plantation; and to the left of the centre another de- 

1815. fensible position was afforded by a farm-house and out¬ 
buildings, called La Haye Sainte. Napoleon’s front was 
unbroken, save by a small roadside inn, near the centre, 
called La Belle Alliance. 

Soon after eleven o’clock the battle began by a fierce 
attack of the French on Hougoumont, and in a brief space 
it raged with the most frightful vehemence over the whole 
field. Both the generals were aware that the Prussians 
were hastening to take a part in the conflict, and the object 
of each was simple: Napoleon striving to break the British 
centre before they could arrive; Wellington resolving to 
remain on the defensive, and to be contented with repelling 
the attacks launched against him, till the arrival of his allies 
enabled him to assume the offensive with superior numbers. 
Napoleon never showed more brilliant genius, his troops 
never exhibited more impetuous and resolute courage than 
in the furious and ceaseless charges with which they endea¬ 
voured to pierce or turn the British position. Never did 
the British display more stubborn hardihood, or their chief 
more promptness and fertility of resource, than in repelling 
the furious onset of their dauntless foes. Time after time 
did the assailants charge up to the wood and walls of 
Hougoumont, as often were they driven back with terrible 
slaughter; once a few found their way within the gates, 
they were slain to a man, without having been able to 
secure an entrance for their comrades. They even set many 
of the buildings on fire with their shells without moving the 
defenders from the remainder, or from the courtyard. La 
Haye Sainte was the scene of an almost equally desperate 
struggle; of that the French did for a short time obtain 
possession when the ammunition of the garrison was ex¬ 
hausted, but from that post they were driven again before 
the end of the day. Still more terribly did the battle rage 
where the British troops were unprotected by such defences, 
but in no quarter did the assailants meet with better suc¬ 
cess. Heavy columns advanced to the front of the British 
positions; they were overlapped by the British regiments in 
line; the leading files were mowed down by the fire, the 
centre and rear were driven back by the bayonet. The 
cavalry dashed up the slope; the British infantry formed 
squares, into which the artillerymen serving the batteries 
withdrew. The hedge of bayonets bristling in triple row 




LXYIir.] GEORGE III. 775 

repelled the most heroic efforts of the cuirassiers ; a rolling, 
ceaseless fire prostrated horses and men; as they retired, 
the artillerymen returned to their guns, pouring their shot 
at deadly distance upon the baffled and dispirited foe. 

Thus, for many long hours, stood the British infantry, victo¬ 
rious, but immovable. Occasionally the cavalry took a more 
active part. More than once they met an intended charge 
of the enemy by themselves becoming the assailants. Lord 
Uxbridge, the commander of the whole, led on the life¬ 
guards and blues with crushing effect against the cuirassiers, 
who, despite their armour, were beaten back and trampled 
down by the superior energy and physical strength of the 
British troopers. Ponsonby, with the greys, the Enniskil- 
lens, and the royal dragoons, utterly routed a far superior 
force opposed to him, took hundreds of prisoners, and for 
the whole day disabled some most formidable batteries, 
dying himself before he could receive any other reward of 
his exploit than the admiration of both armies. 

The battle had lasted nearly six hours without one ad¬ 
vantage having been gained by the French, when the Prus¬ 
sians reached the field and began to operate on their flank. 
One hope still remained to Napoleon : his old guard, the 
flower of his army, the veterans who had decided many a 
hard-fought contest, had been reserved for this moment; 
their strength was unimpaired by fatigue, their ranks were 
unthinned by the slaughter which had made such havoc 
■with their comrades; they were now brought forward for a 
final charge and led on by Ney himself. In the most fear¬ 
ful of the disasters which had overwhelmed the French 
army on its retreat from Russia, Ney had earned from his 
master, never too profuse in the praise which he bestowed 
on others, the glorious title of “the bravest of the brave,” 
and his soldiers were worthy of such a leader. They came 
on rapidly, yet steadily, as if feeling that the fate of their 
sovereign was in their hands. The light division poured a 
deadly fire into their flank, mowing down scores as they 
passed; but they faltered not, and pressed gallantly forward 
to the decisive spot. Wellington himself was there, as 
during the whole day he had been wherever the danger was 
most imminent; the British guards were lying down behind 
the crown of the ridge, thus seeking shelter from the cease¬ 
less storm of the French artillery which poured upon them 
over the heads of the attacking columns. As the French 


A.n. 

1815. 


776 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 




[CH. 

a.d. bearskins appeared above the summit the duke himself gave 

1815. the word of command, “ Up, guards, and at them!” Up 
sprung the grenadiers, and with one volley stretched 300 
of the French in the dust; their comrades staggered, in vain 
their officers cheered them on. Again the duke gave an 
order, and the conquering brigade charged the wavering and 
disordered enemy; then all was rout and confusion. The Im¬ 
perial guard, never before conquered, threw down arms and 
knapsacks, and fled down the hill, pursued for some distance 
and slaughtered almost without resistance by the triumphant 
Britons. 

All hope of victory was now gone from the French. The 
promptitude of Wellington converted their discomfiture into 
a rout. As the light cavalry brigade pressed the retiring 
guard, he perceived that the whole line of the French army 
was dismayed at their repulse : waving his hat, he ordered 
an advance of his whole force. The men, who for nearly 
eight hours had been opposing only a passive resistance to 
the endless assaults of their foes, received the command 
with enthusiasm. The trumpets sounded. Just at that 
moment the evening sun burst forth from the clouds, and 
the first beams that had shone during the whole day were 
reflected from the advancing bayonets and sabres of the 
British army charging down the hill in assured triumph. 
But few of the French resisted even for a moment. Napo¬ 
leon, who had hitherto done all that genius and resolution 
could do, now pronounced that all was lost, and rode from 
the field. By this time the Prussians had arrived in full 
force; the English army was too much exhausted to pursue 
the flying enemy; that task Blucher undertook, sending 
every man and horse of his whole force on their track, and 
completing the rout with the most unwearied energy. No 
defeat had ever been so complete. The whole of the artil¬ 
lery, ammunition, and baggage of the French, Napoleon’s 
carriage, and all his private papers fell into the hands of the 
conquerors; Napoleon himself only escaped instant cap¬ 
tivity by riding all night, never stopping till he reached 
Charleroi. Many thousand prisoners were taken, still more 
deserted their colours for ever, and of the whole army that 
had stood so proudly on the heights of La Belle Alliance in 
the morning not one-third was ever collected again around 
their standards. 

Napoleon hastened to Paris, hoping to raise another 





liXVIII.] GEORGE III. 777 

army; but bis return bad never been acceptable to tbe chief 
statesmen of tbe country, and be was forced to abdicate. 
He then solicited the command of tbe army, as a general of 
the state, in order to repel the invaders. That was refused 
him ; and after lingering a few days at Malmaison be re¬ 
tired to Kochefort with the intention of escaping to Ame¬ 
rica ; but that port was so vigilantly watched by our cruisers 
that that scheme was found impracticable, and at last, fear¬ 
ing to remain at the mercy of the Bourbons, who were 
already re-established on the throne, he surrendered to the 
English captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon, writing a 
pedantic letter to the prince regent, in which, speaking as 
it his placing himself in his power had been a voluntary act, 
he professed to expect to be allowed to fix his residence in 
England. The English ministers would have been traitors 
to the best interests of Europe had they been imposed on 
by so flimsy a pretence. In accordance with the unanimous 
opinion of all the chief powers of the allies, he was removed 
to the island of St. Helena, where he was allowed every 
liberty consistent with his safe detention. A handsome 
establishment was provided for him, and a considerable suite 
was allowed to accompany and remain with him. 

His fall had been great; he did not dignify it by bearing 
it with magnanimity. Eor some years the newspapers 
were filled with his unmanly complaints and petty squabbles. 
He complained of having no higher title allowed him than 
that of general Buonaparte, of being attended in his rides 
by an English officer, and of English sentinels being placed 
in sight of his windows. Though the finest house in the 
island was allotted to him, with a sum for his maintenance 
which trebled that of the English governor, he complained 
of the inadequacy of this establishment, and the badness of 
the wine provided for him. He insulted the governor, sir 
Hudson Lowe, in the grossest manner, and then he and 
his partisans in England (where, strange to say, he still 
had some, even in the parliament) abused the governor 
for not always bearing his insults with equanimity. At 
last, after nearly six years of captivity, he died of a cancer 
in the stomach, the same disease that had proved fatal to 
his father; showing his malignity and utter want of prin¬ 
ciple and of honour in his last will, in which he bequeathed a 
legacy to a man, named Cantillon, avowedly because he had 
lately made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Wellington. 


A.D. 

1815. 


778 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER LXIX. 

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED). 

A ' D * The joy in England at the re-establishment of peace was 
]gjg exulting and universal, but it was shortlived. The war had 
produced an artificial stimulus of high prices, and the sudden 
fall of those prices in consequence of the change in affairs pro¬ 
duced very general distress, and a panic, by which the dis¬ 
tress itself was both exceeded and aggravated. Numerous 
measures were adopted to alleviate it, some devised by the 
ministers, others forced on them by the opposition; the 
right of the bank to pay its customers in notes instead of 
gold was continued for another year; taxes to a large 
amount were repealed, but still formidable riots broke out in 
many places. On one occasion the prince regent himself 
was shot at, on his way from parliament, and at last a 
committee appointed to investigate the state of affairs re¬ 
ported that a very extensive conspiracy to overturn the 
government existed in many of the chief towns of the king¬ 
dom. The habeas corpus act was suspended, severe laws 
against seditious meetings were passed, but what was more 
effectual than legislation in re-establishing tranquillity was a 
bountiful harvest, which removed a great deal of the distress ; 
and by the end of the year 1817 all danger of disturbance 
for a time had passed away. 

The same period was marked by an event of great personal 
interest and political importance: the death of the princess 
Charlotte, the only child of the prince regent, and conse¬ 
quently the heiress of the kingdom. She had been married, 
in the preceding year, to prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg; 
and in November, 1817, she died in her confinement. 
During her short life she had evinced considerable abilities, 
with many high and amiable qualities, and was very gene¬ 
rally beloved by the people at large, who lamented her 
death with a depth of feeling, and with an unanimity which 
few other events could have awakened. It seemed as if the 
royal family was threatened with entire extinction, for the 
next brother of the prince, the duke of York, was childless, 
and the younger dukes were all past the middle age. But 
in the course of the next year they all married, and in 1819 
all danger of such a calamity as has been mentioned was 
removed, by the successive births of the prince of Cambridge, 





LXIX.] GEOKGE m. 779 

prince George of Cumberland, and our present gracious 
sovereign. 

The peace which was now so happily established in 
Europe did not extend to Asia; and Africa also, in the year 
after the battle of AVaterloo, witnessed a great display of 
British power and courage on her especial element, the sea. 
The Algerines, always pirates, had exercised their infamous 
trade more vigorously than ever during the long war, keep¬ 
ing the inhabitants of all the coasts of the Mediterranean 
in ceaseless alarm ; and in May, 1816, they even ventured to 
assail a large party of Christians, at Bona, a town on the 
coast of Africa, who were celebrating the festival of the 
Ascension, tore down the flag from the house of the British 
consul, and threw the consul himself into prison. The 
British government determined to make this outrage a pre¬ 
text for crushing them altogether, and sent sir Edward 
Pellew, better known by the title which he now earned of 
lord Exmouth, a naval officer of the very greatest skill and 
reputation, with a powerful fleet, to rid the Mediterranean 
of the horde of pirates who had so long infested its waters. 
There was no place more strongly fortified than Algiers; in¬ 
deed, so confident was the Dey of the impregnable character 
of its defences, that he permitted the British ships to take 
their stations without opposition, in order to bring them 
more completely within his power. It was a fatal act of 
confidence : the moment that the ships reached the positions 
allotted to them, they opened so well directed a fire, that 
some of the strongest batteries were dismounted in a few 
minutes. The fortifications were all made of hard stone, 
which crumbled beneath the iron hail, and vast breaches 
were soon made in every direction. The Algerines bore the 
slaughter inflicted on them bravely, and replied gallantly to 
the British fire; a powerful flotilla of gun-boats issued from 
the dockyard, with the intention of carrying the British 
ships by boarding; they were nearly all sunk as they 
approached; but still the Mussultnen, encouraged by their 
creed, which promised certain salvation to all who fall in 
battle against Christians, protracted the fight till all further 
resistance had become impossible, till their fleet was destroyed, 
their fortifications were rendered a heap of ruins, and nearly 
7000 men were slain. Though the conflict had begun soon 
after two in the afternoon, it was past seven in the evening 
before it was at all relaxed on either side; nor was it till the 


A.I). 

181G. 


780 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. next morning, when lord Exmouth was preparing to renew 

iolG. .j-pg a ttack, that the Dey submitted to his demands ; agreed 
to make reparation to the British consul lor the insults he 
had received, to release all Christian prisoners in his domi¬ 
nions, and to renounce for ever the right to reduce Chris¬ 
tians to slavery in future. 

Equally decisive were our triumphs in India. Lord 
Wellesley had been succeeded by lord Cornwallis, and he 
by lord Minto, both of whom had tried a more pacific 
policy, which had rather fostered than checked the in¬ 
triguing spirit of the native princes. 

In 1813 the marquis of Hastings was appointed governor- 
general, and soon after his arrival found it necessary to 
adopt stronger measures of coercion towards them. After 
a short contest he reduced the Nepaulese to submission ; 
but, like lord Wellesley, found the Mahrattas the most 
formidable enemies to the tranquillity of India. The 
peishwah, discontented at the engagements into which he 
had been forced to enter with the company, was eagerly 
watching for an opportunity to break them, carrying on 
every kind of intrigue with those who favoured his views 
at the different native courts, and employing every kind of 
means, even assassination itself, against those who opposed 
them. Among his most useful allies were the Pindarrees, 
who were bands of cavalry living mainly on plunder, in 
time of war usually in the service of one or other of the 
principal Mahratta chieftains, and even in time of peace 
constantly disturbing the British possessions by their law¬ 
less incursions. Lord Hastings, who was resolved to crush 
the Mahrattas, could not have spared the Pindarrees, even 
had he been disposed to do so; but, in fact, he was con¬ 
vinced that their subjugation was equally necessary ; and 
he began to prepare his measures for that object with great 
vigour. The Pindarrees made no formal resistance, but 
trusted to flight. But before lord Hastings’ preparations 
were matured, the peishwah himself struck the first blow, 
by attacking the British residency at Poonah. The other 
Mahratta chieftains made common cause with him; and 
against the most formidable of them, Mulhar Rao Holkar, 
the son of that Holkar who had been so conspicuous an 
actor in the first Mahratta war, the first efforts of the 
British army were directed, by general sir Thomas Hislop. 
His second in command was sir John Malcolm, one of the 





GEORGE III. 


781 


LXIX.] 

ablest servants who ever obeyed the orders of the East 
India Company. To him the main attack upon the enemy 
was entrusted, when they were overtaken at Mehidpoor, 
a strong town on the river Sepree. A bold attack, which 
Malcolm himself led with the most heroic courage, utterly 
routed the enemy. Holkar submitted, and was stripped of 
the greater part of his territories. Eeft of his allies, the 
peishwah had no alternative but to copy his submission. 
The Pindarrees dispersed; but the most enterprising of 
their chieftains, Cheetoo, fled with the rajah of Berar, 
intending to take refuge in Asseerghur, an isolated fort of 
amazing strength in Scindia’s territories. Cheetoo him¬ 
self was destroyed by a tiger. The fate of the rajah is 
uncertain, though there is little doubt that he was killed 
in the fort, which the garrison made a gallant but vain 
attempt to defend, being at length forced to surrender and 
to submit to whatever terms the conquerors thought fit to 
impose; and lord Hastings, who retained his vice-royalty 
till 1823, was thus enabled to employ the remaining period 
of his government in consolidating the British authority 
throughout the whole of central India. 

A triumph of another and of a purer kind was obtained 
by sir James Mackintosh, who, following in the path that 
had in some degree been opened by sir Samuel ltomilly, 
obtained the consent of parliament to a revision of our 
criminal code, previously stained with the reproach of being 
the bloodiest code in Europe, and laid the foundation of 
new principles of legislation with regard to punishment, 
which have gradually prevailed, till our statute-book is now 
as remarkable for its humanity as it used to be odious from 
its severity. 

The last years of this long reign were disturbed by dis¬ 
contents arising from difficulties which were probably in a 
great degree unavoidable, though they may perhaps have 
been aggravated by hasty legislation. The reaction con¬ 
sequent upon the re-establishment of peace after so long a 
period of war, the consequent fall of prices, the change in 
the financial system of the kingdom by the necessary return 
of cash payments, had all an inevitable tendency to create 
distress among the working classes. Distress bred dis¬ 
content, and discontent produced sedition and disturbance. 
Artful demagogues availed themselves of the general feeling 
to excite a fresh demand for parliamentary reform, as the 


A.D. 

] 817— 
1818. 


A.D. 

1819- 

1820. 


782 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

/ 

panacea for all the evils suffered by the people; and political 
clubs were formed in many of the chief towns of the king¬ 
dom, especially in the manufacturing districts. One of the 
most numerous societies of the kind was established at 
Manchester; and in August, 1819, it summoned a large 
assemblage of the people to meet at a place called Peterloo, 
in the neighbourhood of that town. The summons caused 
great alarm among the magistrates. It was known that 
large bodies of those who might be expected to attend had 
been practising a kind of military drill for some months; 
and there was reason to fear that they might take occasion 
to exhibit their new science in a manner dangerous to the 
peace of the whole community. The magistrates endea¬ 
voured to prevent the meeting by arresting the intended 
chief spokesman, a person of the name of Hunt; and the 
government had previously sent down two regiments to 
enable them to suppress all opposition; but the vast mob, 
consisting of upwards of 60,000 persons, was furious at the 
attempt to arrest their leader. A fierce contest arose. The 
soldiers were called out, and order was not restored till 
several persons had been killed, chiefly by the pressure of 
the crowd, and many more severely wounded by the sabres 
of the hussars. Hunt was convicted of sedition, and sen¬ 
tenced to a long imprisonment; while, on the other hand, 
a large party severely condemned the conduct of the magis¬ 
trates in calling in the military wdthout, as was alleged, 
any sufficient provocation. The ministers, however, entirely 
approved of their conduct; and parliament, by very large 
majorities in both houses, sanctioned the views of the 
ministers, and passed very stringent acts to prevent such 
meetings for the future. 

At the beginning of 1820, George III. died, in the six¬ 
tieth year of his reign. He had been so long deprived of 
the faculties necessary to enable him to discharge the duties 
of royalty, that his death might have been expected to 
make but little impression, as it did not appear likely to 
be of any political importance; but it produced a very 
general sensation of real sorrow among the people at 
large, who to their inborn reverence for his royal dignity, 
and to their cordial respect for his character, had learnt 
of late to add an affectionate sympathy for his sufferings. 

And the affection with which for many years they had 
honoured him while alive, and with which they now mourned 







GEORGE III. 


783 


LX1X.] 

him when dead, was earned by some considerable talents, a.d. 
and by many eminent virtues. His education had been 1820. 
greatly neglected by his mother, so that he was not a man 
ot great information; but he was gifted in a high degree 
with that plain good sense, which in the affairs of life is often 
of more practical value than the more showy gifts of genius. 

He had a thorough knowledge of the business of the state 
in all its departments; an acute insight into character; an 
aftable and often lively wit in society, and at all times the 
faculty of expressing himself with singular clearness both in 
writing and speaking. His virtues were of a higher cast, 
and were such that the nation is not only largely indebted 
to them for the honour in which piety and virtue have been 
held since his accession, but also, very probably, for the 
stability of many of its institutions, amid the convulsions 
w r hich were agitating the world around. It was a great 
thing, at a time when revolution was overturning some 
thrones, shaking the foundations of others, and, by dwelling 
on the weaknesses, or vices, or cruelties of their rulers, in 
every other country loosening men’s respect for the princi¬ 
ples, the customs, and even the religion of their forefathers, 
it was a great thing for this land to be able to point to a 
sovereign who, with his consort, was a pattern of every 
domestic virtue, and, by the personal example of religion 
and piety which he afforded to all his subjects, a real de¬ 
fender of the faith. Perhaps even his somewhat homely 
tastes, and a certain rusticity of manner which characterized 
him, strengthened the attachment to his person so deeply 
felt by the middle classes, who were proud that farmer 
George, as he was very commonly called, had the same pur¬ 
suits and likings as themselves. Ho king since Charles II. 
had been personally known to so many of his subjects, none 
had ever taken so friendly an interest in their individual 
concerns. If, in the earlier years of his reign, he permitted 
himself to be mixed up more than became him in the intri¬ 
gues of political factious, he soon shook off the evil influence, 
and exhibited in all his dealings with all parties the most 
unwavering honesty and sincerity; he w T as a warm and 
stedfast friend; and if the firmness of purpose which led 
him to be so did, at times, when applied to political affairs, 
degenerate into obstinacy, we must at least allow that this 
pertinacity was only exhibited on occasions wdien he sincerely 
believed the most vital interests of religion to be at stake; 


A.D. 

1820. 


784 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

and that the events of the French revolution, where innova¬ 
tions, many of which were in themselves not undesirable, 
had gradually led to anarchy and atheism, were calculated to 
alarm a mind not fortified by any extensive historical know¬ 
ledge, nor much inclined to the speculations of political 
philosophy. 

This reign was the true Augustan age of England. It 
may be questioned whether any country in the world, during 
its whole history, has brought forth a greater number of 
illustrious men in every sphere in which true fame is acquired 
than adorned Gfreat Britain in this comparatively brief period. 
The great statesmen, the eloquent orators, the mighty con¬ 
querors have been already mentioned in the course of our 
narrative; and besides them, every department of literature 
was explored by writers of the most exquisite taste, of the 
most lofty and varied genius : philosophy presented hitherto 
unacknowledged truths, both moral and political, to the 
world in a dress so attractive as to produce their general 
recognition; and science, by some of its most marvellous 
discoveries, opened treasures of wealth hitherto unsuspected 
to the energetic industry of both the inland and the sea¬ 
faring population. 

I allude of course to Arkwright’s invention of the spinning- 
jenny, to which is owing the prodigious increase of our 
cotton manufacture; and to Watt’s discovery of the powers 
of steam, which- has not only furnished workmen of every 
kind with fresh resources, aiding and promoting their inge¬ 
nuity in every sphere by the most delicate or the most 
powerful machinery, but which, by increasing the rapidity 
of locomotion, has abridged the distances which formerly 
separated one country from another, which by thus facili¬ 
tating the intercourse of the human race, has enlarged the 
boundaries of human knowledge, and, we may fairly hope, 
by increasing and tightening the different ties which bind 
nations to each other, may in time prove the most influential 
cause of peace and harmony among mankind. 

At the same time Herschel, the student of a sublimer 
science, with telescopes of unexampled power, was opening 
wider regions of the heavens, filled with stars and planets 
previously unknown, to the gaze of mankind, and thus lead¬ 
ing them in the most practical manner, while admiring the 
glories of the firmament, to ponder with increased venera¬ 
tion on the still more glorious attributes of the mighty 





GEORGE 111. 


785 


LXIX.] 

Being who, by his excellent wisdom, made the heavens, and 
who, countless as the stars appear to our limited faculties, 
“ telleth their numbers, and calleth them all by their 
names.” 

In the fine arts, Arne delighted the ear with the most 
scientific and, at the same time, the most melodious music. 
Reynolds in portraits, Gainsborough and Wilson in land¬ 
scape raised the reputation of the English school of painting 
to a deservedly high rank; while, at the end of the reign, 
Lawrence, Turner, and Wilkie were in the zenith of their fame, 
and Landseer was beginning those marvellous delineations 
of animals which still make his works the chief attraction of 
our exhibitions. As sculptors, Elaxman and Chantrey earned 
a renown but little inferior to that of the greatest modem 
artists ; and, as an engineer, Brunei, the contriver of the 
Thames Tunnel, exhibited a skill that has never been surpassed. 
In architecture the labourers were numerous rather than 
eminent, and it was reserved for a subsequent reign, and for 
a great national calamity, to show that the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury could boast of an artist able to emulate at once the 
grandeur of Wren and the airy elegance of the Gothic and 
Italian masters. 

If we turn to literature, Johnson’s greatest works, his 
Dictionary ‘and his Rambler, belong to the preceding 
reign; still, as he lived till after the close of the American 
war, he may fairly be claimed for that of which we are 
speaking. Paley, by his eloquent exposition of the funda¬ 
mental proofs of Christianity, disarmed infidelity of its 
choicest weapons ; and Adam Smith sent forth from his 
closet sound lessons of political economy to enlighten 
the rulers of nations, and to spread riches and prosperity 
among the people. 

The muse of history received the offerings of many most 
successful worshippers. Though Gibbon’s apparently la¬ 
boured style is too much tainted with mannerism to render 
it a safe model, and though his unfortunate scepticism on 
the holiest subjects makes him a still more dangerous guide 
for the young and unreflecting, yet all must admire the dig¬ 
nified march of his narrative, his varied and unsurpassed 
powers of sarcasm and of pathos, and the boundless learning 
with which he adorns and illustrates every portion of his 
great and interesting theme. Yery different from, and even 
superior to him was his contemporary, Hume, whose “ care- 


A.D. 

1820. 


786 


HISTORY OF EXGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. less, inimitable beauties ” awakened bis most cordial ad- 

1820. m i r ation ; and who has painted to us the history of our own 
forefathers with powers of description never surpassed, with 
the most lively wit, the most piercing acuteness, and the 
most intelligible good sense; which, in spite of the political 
bias which in some cases detracts from the perfect candour 
of his narrative, have won for him the undisputed palm of 
pre-eminence among all modern writers in his line. The 
easy fluency and picturesque narrative of Robertson and of 
Southey are appreciated by every scholar; and Napier, who, 
as a writer, perhaps more strictly belongs to the succeeding 
era, delights, not only the military reader, but those also to 
whom his professional disquisitions are unintelligible, by 
spirited descriptions of battles and sieges that could only 
have been prompted by the vivid personal recollection that 
he retains of events which he himself witnessed, and in 
many of which he bore an honourable share. The writings 
of Hallam and of Smythe, being commentaries on history 
rather than history itself, are perhaps less attractive than 
the works above alluded to, but not less instructive to those 
who would weigh the principles which have actuated princes 
and statesmen, and who would fain form a correct judgment 
of the motives which have influenced, or which ought to have 
influenced their conduct, and the destiny of the nations com¬ 
mitted to their charge. 

In classical literature Porson and Elmsley upheld the 
fame of British scholarship, and in the drama Sheridan sur¬ 
passed the wit and humour of Congreve and of Parquhar while 
avoiding the indelicacy that disfigures the works of them 
and of the other writers of their age. 

Most especially was this reign prolific of pretenders to 
poetic fame, the greater part of whom are already consigned 
to the oblivion which still more deserve, while some few 
have secured a partial, but apparently permanent reputa¬ 
tion, and one or two a renown which it may confidently be 
predicted will last as long as the language in which they 
wrote. The works of Goldsmith and of Gray are few and 
brief, but the Deserted Village, and the Elegy in a Church¬ 
yard, speak to every heart, and find a place in every 
memory. Burns with true genius, and Moore with the 
most exquisite ear and taste, diffused an universal admira¬ 
tion for the songs of their respective countries; while 
Campbell with his spirit-stirring lyrics rivalled the glories of 






GEORGE III. 


787 


LXIX.] 

Pindar or of Horace. Chatterton in his marvellous imita- a.d. 
tions of the earlier poets displayed a degree of talent which 1820 - 
makes one grieve that it was not under the guidance of a 
better regulated ambition. Coleridge exhibited powers that 
aw T ake a regret that his invincible indolence prevented him 
from giving to the world any work worthy of his natural 
gifts. Cowper and Wordsworth, clothing grave lessons in a 
poetical dress, have secured for themselves a large class of 
admirers. But far above all stand Byron and Scott; the first 
of whom has enriched our language with the most beautiful 
descriptive poem ever penned, and with many works of less 
magnitude, but of equal beauty, painting the stormy work¬ 
ings of passion in the most vivid colours, though open no 
doubt to the criticism that he has given us no extensive nor 
varied view of the human character, but only that which he 
found within the recesses of his own troubled and moody 
and wayward heart; open, too, to the more serious accusa¬ 
tion, that at times he recklessly pandered to licence and 
immorality, and to the reproach, which in this case should 
be mingled with pity, that he does not always conceal the 
scepticism which, unhappily for himself, poisoned the springs 
of his life, and darkened his mighty intellect. Against 
Scott no such reproach can be alleged. In him the most 
exquisite and varied genius was ever under the dominion of 
the purest patriotism and virtue. As a delineator of the 
beauties of nature he is unrivalled, and equally so when 
describing the chivalric courtesy of the knight, the untutored 
courage of the border chieftain, the rugged fidelity of the old 
retainer, and the sympathetic tenderness and ever-beautiful 
affection of woman, rising into sublimity when painting the 
combats both of armies and of individuals. The conflict 
between Boderick and Fitz-James may well stand beside 
that of Turnus and iEneas, and never, since the first poet 
told how Greeks and Trojans strove in mortal fray before 
the Scaean gates, have the heroic deeds of mighty warriors 
been sung in nobler strains than those in which the poet of 
Scotland has celebrated his countrymen’s victory at Bannock¬ 
burn, or their overthrow at Flodden. 

It is, however, not only as a poet that Scott has earned 
the meed of imperishable renown ; and perhaps the greatest 
glory of the whole reign, in a literary point of view, is 
derived from his novels, embracing every phase of life, and 
every period of history; displaying all the beauties which 

3 E 2 


788 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. adorn his poems in still more luxuriant profusion ; equally 
1820. powerful in the delineation of every kind of character, 
whether the subject be the fierce heroism of Richard, the 
good humour of Charles, the crafty meanness of Louis, the 
sturdy honesty of Dinmont, or the eccentric affection of the 
faithful Dominie; still more affecting when setting before us 
the mingled dignity and grace of the oppressed Mary, the 
devotion of Jeanie Deans, or the misery of the bereaved 
[Flora, the high-souled purity of Alice Lee, or the ill-re¬ 
quited devotion of the murdered wife of Leicester. 

At the beginning of the present century the population 
had doubled since the revolution, and another million had 
been added to it before the end of the reign. The war with 
America, and still more that with France, had increased the 
national debt to an enormous sum ; but the wealth and 
resources of the nation had risen in a still greater propor¬ 
tion, so that during the latter years of peace it supported 
with ease, as a permanent burden, a weight of taxation 
which would have been deemed intolerable for a single year 
even by the prodigal genius of Chatham. 


CHAPTER LXX. 


GEORGE IT. 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Austria. 
Francis II. 


A.D. 


France. 
Louis XVIII. 
Charles X. . 


1824 


1825 


Russia. a.d. 
Alexander. 

Nicholas I. . 

Prussia. 

Fred. William III. 

Spain. 
Ferdinand VII. 


Portugal. 
John VI. 


A.D. 


Popes. 
Pius VII. 

Leo XII. . 


1823 


1820. 


George IV., who succeeded to the throne, was fifty-eight 
years of age; and, as has been before mentioned, had now 
for several years been discharging all the duties of the 
sovereign. We have now arrived at a period within the 
memory of the existing generation. Many of the chief 
actors in the events to be recorded are still among us, and 
we shall consequently be more brief in our narration of 
them, as being too recent to be regarded by either writer 
or reader with the impartiality befitting the historical 
student, or to allow the influences and motives which caused 
them to be fairly appreciated or correctly ascertained. 


§ 









GEORGE IV. 


789 


LXX.] 

The new reign had nearly been inaugurated by the suc¬ 
cess of the most monstrous conspiracy that had alarmed 
the nation since the gunpowder plot, and which, like that, 
only failed of success from being betrayed at the last 
moment by an accomplice. A miscreant, named Thistle- 
wood, induced a number of desperate persons to join him 
in an attempt to murder the whole of the ministers, to 
storm the bank, to burn the city of London, and to over¬ 
turn the established government. Their plans were ripe 
for execution. Their place of meeting was surprised by the 
police, aided by a body of soldiers. The greater part of 
them were arrested. The ringleaders were tried, convicted, 
and executed ; and, though the spirit of discontent, which 
had first inspired these conspirators with a hope of success, 
broke out in a formidable degree in several districts, and 
especially in the manufacturing parts of Scotland, it was 
speedily put down by the firmness of the ministers, and the 
attention of the people” in general was drawn off to a more 
remarkable, if not more important affair. 

The king had separated from his wife within a few weeks 
of their marriage. The latter had for some years resided 
at Greenwich, where she had behaved with such levity and 
indiscretion, that an investigation of her conduct had been 
rendered necessary, though the result appeared to indicate 
that nothing more than incautious freedom could be proved 
against her. Of late years, however, she had been living abroad, 
and her behaviour had created far greater scandal, it being 
generally believed that she had admitted a low-born Italian, 
named Bergami, to the most intimate familiarity. Influenced 
by this belief, the king, on his accession to the throne at 
the death of his father, prevented her name from being 
inserted as queen in the prayer for the royal family ; and, 
though her best advisers would have counselled her to 
remain abroad, and to waive her claims for a fixed income 
suitable to her rank, she at once resolved on coming to 
England, and exhibiting her hatred of her husband, which 
could not certainly be said to have been unprovoked, by a 
public prosecution of her claims to share in all his new 
dignities. 

The king was nowise backward in exhibiting the same 
feelings towards her, and insisted on his ministers pro¬ 
curing him a divorce. They saw the impolicy and danger 
of such a proceeding. Apart from all other considerations, 


CO > 





790 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. it was clear that no husband whose conduct had been such 
1820— as th a t of George IV. had ever obtained a release from an 
1821, existing marriage; but at last his will overcame their re¬ 
solution, and they yielded, with the single exception of 
Mr. Canning, the president of the board of control, who 
resigned his office in preference to being a party to the 
proceeding. 

The queen landed in England in June, and proceeded 
at once to London, amid the acclamations of the common 
people, who took her part with great fervour and unanimity. 
Early in July lord Liverpool, the prime minister, brought 
forward in the house of lords a bill to dissolve her marriage 
with the king, on the ground of her adultery with Bergami. 
The proceedings in support of the bill took the form of a 
trial at the bar of the house of lords, conducted by the law' 
officers of the crown on one side, and by Mr. Brougham 
and Mr. Denman, as the queen’s attorney and solicitor- 
general, on her part. Eor a month the nation was scan¬ 
dalized by evidence, which, if true, proved the grossest 
misconduct on the part of the queen; nor, though they 
managed to discredit some of the foreign witnesses, could 
her able lawyers succeed in throwing any real doubt upon 
the merits of her case; but the feeling against the whole 
proceeding grew stronger daily. The majorities which 
supported the bill in the house of lords decreased rapidly; 
and, at last, as the third reading was carried only by a 
majority of nine, the ministers abandoned it altogether. 

To a certain extent the queen had triumphed; but she 
did not live long to enjoy her victory. The next year the 
coronation of the king took place, and she insisted on her 
right to participate in that ceremony ; but her claim was 
disallowed. In fact, upon examining the precedents, it 
appeared, singularly enough, that though most preceding 
queens had been crowned, there had not been above one 
or two since the conquest wffio had been crowned at the 
same time with their husbands. She then attempted to 
force her way into Westminster Abbey on the day of the 
ceremony, in the hope of creating some disturbance, but 
was refused admittance; and the mortification she expe¬ 
rienced, acting upon her always excitable feelings, produced 
an illness, of which she died at the beginning of August, 
1821. Her body, by her own desire, was removed to 
Brunswick for burial. 




GEORGE IV. 


791 


LXX.] 

Even before her death she had in a great measure lost 
her popularity, and the king had risen in the regard of 
the nation. He improved that feeling by paying visits to 
Ireland and Scotland, neither of which countries he had 
ever seen, and in both of which he was received with un¬ 
bounded enthusiasm, and gained golden opinions from all 
classes by his affability and by the graces of manner in 
which no prince ever surpassed him. 

In the autumn of 1822 the ministry lost its ablest 
member by the death of lord Castlereagh, whose health 
had given way under the constant pressure of business in 
his most laborious office, and who, in a fit of temporary 
delirium, put an end to his own existence. Great in every 
thing but eloquence, he found a worthy successor in 
Canning, whose chief reputation, however, was founded on 
his excellence in that very qualification in which Castle¬ 
reagh failed. He, too, was a statesman of large views and 
brilliant genius, and he had greatly raised his character by 
abandoning office at the time of the proceedings against the 
queen; he had just been appointed governor-general of 
India, and was on the point of proceeding to that country 
when Castlereagh died; he now took the seals of the 
foreign office, and the lead in the house of commons, and 
was universally looked up to as the presiding genius of the 
ministry during the rest of his life. Another alteration 
had lately taken place in the cabinet, lord Sidmouth, now 
an old man, having relinquished the post of home secretary, 
and having been succeeded by Mr. Peel; and at the same 
time lord Wellesley became lord-lieutenant of Ireland, which 
was in a condition eminently requiring the hand of a firm 
and able ruler. 

Eor that country was again under the pressure of severe 
and general distress, arising in a great degree from the 
improvident manner in which the land had been subdivided 
among small holders. Distress, as usual, produced dis¬ 
turbance ; and the competition for even the smallest por¬ 
tions of land gave rise to fearful crimes, to outrages of 
every kind, incendiarism, and assassination. By an ad¬ 
mirable mixture of conciliation and firmness lord Wellesley 
succeeded in some degree in allaying the spirit of disaffec¬ 
tion ; but the ill feeling was rather stifled than eradicated; 
and it is only within the last few years that the cause of 
the evil has been to some extent removed, partly by the 


A.D. 
1821 — 
1822 . 






792 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. extensive emigration which has taken place, and partly by 
1*^3 fh e introduction of English capital into the country, through 
the gradual operation of the encumbered estates’ act; so 
that we may be allowed to hope there is at length dawning 
upon that long-vexed land a fortune more worthy of the 
many advantages of the country itself, and of the courage 
and genius of its people. 

At the same time the preservation of the peace of Europe 
was greatly endangered. In Spain the people had risen 
in rebellion against their sovereign, and affairs had assumed 
so ominous an aspect, that a congress of ministers of the 
principal European powers to decide on the conduct to be 
adopted by them with reference to the state of that 
country was held at Verona, in the north of Italy, which 
was attended by the duke of Wellington as the British 
plenipotentiary. Lord Castlereagli, in one of the last state 
papers which he drew up, had pronounced his decision in 
favour of the absolute non-intervention of England; and 
his line of policy was carried out with great firmness by his 
successor. The Erench government, however, could not be 
induced to adopt the same course; but, thinking that the 
throne of Louis XVIII. might be imperilled by the success 
of the revolutionary party in Spain, they sent into that 
country a powerful army, under the duke d’Angouleme, 
which speedily put down all opposition, and re-established 
king Ferdinand in his pristine authority. The ascendancy 
thus acquired by France over the Spanish councils gave 
Canning more anxiety than even the previous disturbed 
state of Spain herself. It endangered, as he conceived, the 
balance of power in a most formidable degree; and with a 
view to diminish French influence by at least preventing 
its extension to America, he recognized the independence 
of the states in South America, which had lately thrown off 
the dominion of Spain, and, by formal treaties, established 
commercial relations with them, from which great advantages 
to British interests were confidently expected. 

In these instances he preserved peace by abstinence from 
all intervention. Two years later he maintained it by the 
most energetic interference. In 1823 Portugal had caught 
the flame of insurrection from Spain; and, though for a 
time tranquillity had been re-established, the seeds of a 
rebellious spirit remained alive in that country, and were 
fostered by Spain, who allowed bands of Portuguese rebels 






GEORGE IV. 


793 


LXX.] 

to be armed and trained on the Spanish side of the border, 
from whence from time to time they made incursions into 
Portugal, with the avowed design of overthrowing the 
Portuguese government. At last, in November, 1826, that 
government made a formal application to England for aid 
against their insurrectionary attempts. It w r as promptly 
alforded: 6000 men were instantly sent to Lisbon. Their 
mission was justified by Mr. Canning to the house of 
commons, in one of the most successful efforts of his elo¬ 
quence. The measure proved completely successful. The 
presence of the soldiers awed the rebels into inaction, pre¬ 
vented Spain and Prance from giving them any further 
countenance, and after a few months the troops returned to 
England. 

While these events were taking place on the Continent, 
at home the ministers (acting chiefly under the influence 
of Mr. Pluskisson, a pupil of Pitt, and an intimate friend 

I of Canning) were taking active measures by the relaxation 
of our navigation laws, and of other restrictive enactments, 
to extend our trade in every quarter of the globe ; and, 
though their policy, in this respect, was, in 1825, inter¬ 
rupted by a crisis, which, in consequence of a rapid and 
unprecedented drain of bullion, threatened for a moment 
even the Bank of England with bankruptcy, the principles 
then established have been gradually extended in their 
operation, till freedom of trade has become the rule, and 
restriction the exception, in the general commercial system 
of the country. 

The year 1827 was fraught with many events of melan¬ 
choly importance. In January the duke of York died ; and, 
as he had always been a most resolute supporter of the law 
by which the Boman Catholics were excluded from parlia¬ 
ment, the party anxious to maintain it regarded his death 
with a degree of concern which w*as largely mingled with 
apprehension. The next month they experienced another 
loss in lord Liverpool, who w^as attacked with paralysis in a 
manner which prevented the possibility of his continuing in 
office. Though not a man of commanding genius, he had 
been a prudent, an upright, and, with the exception of the 
affairs of the queen, a most successful minister; and, from 
the general respect in which he was held, he had shown 
himself eminently fitted to preserve harmonious action in a 
cabinet divided on w r hat had been for some time considered 


A.D. 

18 * 26 — 
1827. 









HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


794 



A.D. 

1 826 — 
1827. 


the most important question of the day, that of the emanci¬ 
pation of the Roman Catholics. 

He was succeeded at the treasury by Mr. Canning, who 
found, however, more difficulty than he had anticipated in 
forming a ministry, from the circumstance of all those of his 
previous colleagues who were adverse to the claims of the 
Roman Catholics at once resigning their offices. The con¬ 
cession of those claims was still to be left an open question 
in the cabinet, as it had been in lord Liverpool’s time ; but 
the duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel alleged that the con¬ 
ceding party would gain too much strength, from the fact 
of the prime minister belonging to it, for them to form a 
part in his government; and the chancellor, lord Eldon, who 
had for some time felt the infirmities of age creeping upon 
him, was glad, from personal motives, to retire from a post 
of such incessant labour as that which he had now held 
for nearly a quarter of a century with a reputation for 
a profound knowledge of every branch of the law, for 
the strictest honesty and uprightness in the discharge of his 
duties, and for uniform courtesy and urbanity towards all 
who were brought in contact with him, which had not been 
exceeded, perhaps I might say, which had not been equalled 
by the greatest of his predecessors. His successor was sir 
John Copley, who, as solicitor-general at the time of the 
queen’s trial, had shown the most brilliant abilities, which, 
as lord Lyndhurst, he was henceforth to display to greater 
perfection in a higher sphere. Lord Dudley succeeded 
Canning himself at the foreign office. Mr. Robinson, the 
chancellor of the exchequer, became lord Groderich and colo¬ 
nial secretary ; and, after a few weeks, lord Lansdowne, one 
of the chief members of the Whig party, consented to 
occupy Peel’s place at the home office. 

The next session of parliament was taken up mainly with 
attacks upon the new government, which, however, soon 
appeared to be well supported in both houses of parlia¬ 
ment, and people in general were looking forward with 
eagerness not unmingled with curiosity to its future mea¬ 
sures, when their anticipations were suddenly terminated by 
Canning’s death. In the middle of July he caught a violent 
cold, which brought on severe inflammation. He was removed 
to the duke of Devonshire’s villa at Chiswick; but neither 
change of air nor medical skill could avail, and, on the 8th 
of August, he expired in the very same room in which Eox 






GEORGE IV. 


795 


LXX.] 

had died a few years before. He was a man of the most 
brilliant genius in every department of statesmanship; by 
far the first orator in the British parliament, uniting the 
firmest attachment to the constitution with the most en¬ 
lightened desire for improvement; and his death at this 
juncture was one of the most severe calamities which could 
have befallen the nation. 

Lord Goderich now became prime minister, and was suc¬ 
ceeded in the colonial office by Mr. Huskisson. The dura¬ 
tion of this new cabinet was scarcely longer than that of 
Canning’s, and was distinguished by only one event, with 
the origin of which it had, however, nothing to do, since it 
was the consequence of measures of the preceding ministry. 
Some years before the Greeks had risen in insurrection 
against the Turkish government. They had proclaimed 
their own independence as a nation. One of the fiercest 
civil wars recorded in history immediately began, distin¬ 
guished by acts of fearful atrocity on both sides. Gradually, 
however, the Greeks gained the advantage, until success, 
as is often the case, introduced divisions into their councils. 
In the mean time their struggles for freedom had awakened 
great interest in England, and procured them some impor¬ 
tant assistance. Among others lord Byron espoused their 
cause, and repaired to Missolonghi, a strong town on the 
gulf of Lepanto, in the marshes around which he caught the 
fever of which he died in the spring of 1824; and lord 
Cochrane brought the more valuable aid of his approved 
courage and skill as a naval commander. In the hope of 
securing the protection of the English government the 
Greeks even offered the sovereignty of their country to 
prince Leopold ; but it was not judged prudent to awaken 
the jealousy of the other powers which were interested in 
the independence of Greece by countenancing the assump¬ 
tion of that dignity by one so closely related to England as 
the widowed husband of the princess Charlotte, and it was 
considered better to place Greece under the joint protection 
of England, France, and Kussia. Accordingly one of Can¬ 
ning’s last acts had been the conclusion of a treaty between 
these three powers, by which they proposed to compel the 
sultan to surrender all but a nominal sovereignty over 
Greece on condition of receiving a fixed tribute from that 
country of such an amount as should cause him no diminu¬ 
tion of his previous revenue. The sultan rejected the pro- 


A.D. 

1827- 









796 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [cH. 

a.d. posal with indignation, on which a powerful English, Erench, 
DT27— a nd Russian fleet was sent to the coast of Greece to defend 
the Greeks by force, if need should arise, from the vigorous 
efforts which the Turks were preparing to make for their 
subjugation. Ibrahim Pacha, the most skilful and daring of 
the Turkish officers, lay with a powerful fleet in the Bay of 
Navarino (celebrated in ancient times under the name of 
Pylos as the scene of the heaviest blow inflicted by Athens 
upon Sparta in the Peloponnesian war). He had also under 
his command a considerable land force, which was committing 
fearful ravages in the Morea, and treating the inhabitants 
with the most atrocious cruelty. The commanders of the 
allied fleet, the chief of whom was the English admiral, sir 
Edward Codrington, in vain required him to desist from his 
cruelties, while negotiations were going on to induce his 
sovereign to agree to the terms which had been proposed 
to him ; and, on his refusal, on the 20th of October they 
attacked his fleet, and, without much difficulty, entirely 
destroyed it. Still the sultan refused to yield; but his 
power over the Greeks was gone for ever, and, at the 
beginning of 1828, count Capo d’lstrias, who had through¬ 
out borne a prominent part as one of the chiefs of the 
insurrection, was elected president of Greece, and began to 
exercise undisputed authority under that title. 

While affairs were going on thus in Europe, in Asia our 
Indian empire was steadily advancing on both sides. On 
the eastern frontier the incursions of the Burmese on our 
Bengal dominions had compelled the governor-general to 
send a strong force, under sir Archibald Campbell, to chas¬ 
tise them by attacking, not the district which lay nearest 
to Calcutta, on which our blows, if dealt at all, were ex¬ 
pected to fall, but their chief port of Rangoon, at the most 
southern part of their territory. The king of Burmah was 
a powerful and martial prince, and his metropolis, Ava, 
though built chiefly of wood, was a large and wealthy city; 
his subjects were numerous and warlike, and so little did 
he dread an encounter with our scanty numbers that he 
boasted that the English troops would be unable even to 
prevent his cooks from boiling their rice. When he was 
undeceived by a severe defeat which his army received in 
the open field, and when he found that even the dense and 
swampy jungles, in which his country abounded, could not 
arrest the progress of the British soldiers, he had recourse 


GEORGE IV. 


797 


LXX.] 

to the system of desolating his territories himself, to pre- a.d 
vent their affording supplies or means of transport to the 1824 
invaders. 182(j 

He was only deferring, not averting his subjugation. 

The British troops, having received some strong reinforce¬ 
ments, advanced steadily inland. Once or twice the enemy 
endeavoured to make a stand behind stockades erected with 
much military skill in favourable positions, but they were 
invariably driven from these fortifications with great 
slaughter. The king sent his own brothers to conduct the 
war, with his chosen corps, called the Invulnerables, men 
who looked as like pieces of furniture as warriors, being 
most beautifully tattooed in various colours over their whole 
bodies, and beiug actually inlaid with gold, silver, and pre¬ 
cious stones, which had been forced under their skin at an 
early age: Some astrologers also accompanied the princes 
to reveal to them the fortunate moment for attacking our 
troops, but their announcements were so public that they 
served rather the purpose of putting us on our guard. 
Their armies were beaten, their stockades were forced, and 
Arracan and Prome, the second and third cities in the 
empire, were successively taken. At the beginning of 1826 
they submitted, ceding large provinces to the Indian govern¬ 
ment, which greatly strengthened their frontier on its 
south-eastern side, and paying a million of money as an 
indemnification for the expenses of the war. 

On the north-western side of the company’s territories a 
conquest of equal importance was made by lord Comber- 
mere, who, as sir Stapleton Cotton, had been one of Wel¬ 
lington’s most distinguished officers in the Peninsula. The 
fortress of Bhurtpore was one of the strongest in India; in 
fact, it had baffled all the skill and resolution of lord Lake, 
whose only military failure consisted in his repulse from 
before its walls. Quarrels among its native princes on the 
subject of the succession to the chief authority rendered our 
interference necessary to establish the legitimate prince in 
possession of his dominions, and to expel his cousin, who 
had usurped them, and, at the end of 1825, lord Comber- 
mere, as commander-in-chief, led against Bhurtpore oue of 
the most powerful armies that at that time had ever been 
collected in one expedition in British India. The fortifica¬ 
tions of the place had been greatly strengthened since lord 
Lake’s attack, and it was held by a resolute garrison of 20,000 


9 








798 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. men ; but means, which they had never anticipated, were 
1825 — employed by the assailants, and they speedily proved irre- 
sistible. The wide, deep moat that surrounded the walls 
w r as drained, mines were run under the most important 
bastions, and the explosion caused such vast breaches in the 
walls, that the garrison, though fighting with heroic valour, 
were unable to defend them against the British troops, 
who poured in in overpowering numbers. The town and 
citadel surrendered, and its capture greatly strengthened 
the belief entertained by the native powers of our invinci¬ 
bility, which had previously been somewhat damaged by the 
existence of a place which had hitherto defied our assaults 
with impunity. 

At home the new cabinet had hardly been formed before 
divisions arose in it, and on the meeting of parliament it 
appeared so incurably weak that lord Goderich resigned his 
office, and was succeeded at the treasury by the duke of 
Wellington ; Peel became home secretary in the place of 
lord Lansdowne. There were no other changes of great 
importance at first, though shortly afterwards, a dispute 
arising about the disposal of some seats in the house of com¬ 
mons, where two boroughs, Penryn and East Betford, had 
been disfranchised for notorious and constant bribery, Mr. 
Huskisson and the rest of those who were looked upon as 
Canning’s party, lord Dudley, lord Palmerston, and Mr. Grant, 
resigned, and were succeeded by sir George Murray, lord 
Aberdeen, sir Henry Hardinge, and Mr. Yesey Fitzgerald. 

This last appointment had a most important though un¬ 
expected result, in accelerating the settlement of the ques¬ 
tion which had proved a stumbling-block to so many admi¬ 
nistrations, that of Roman Catholic emancipation. The 
Dissenters laboured under equal disabilities, which, however, 
were removed at the beginning of the year by carrying a 
bill, brought in by lord John Bussell, for the repeal of the 
acts, commonly called the test and corporation acts, which 
compelled all holders of any place under the crown, all 
members of corporations and other public officers, to receive 
the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. 
The ministers offered but a slight opposition to the bill, 
which indeed a large majority of Churchmen looked upon 
with favour; the chief resistance to it arising from lord Eldon 
and the extreme Tory party, who foresaw that the admission 
of the Protestant Dissenters to civil privileges would increase 


LXX.] GEORGE IV. 799 

the difficulty of maintaining the exclusion of the Roman 
Catholics. 

And that difficulty was daily becoming greater. Twice 
since the beginning of the present reign a bill for their 
emancipation passed the commons, though defeated in the 
house ol lords; and in Ireland, where, from the great nume¬ 
rical superiority of the Roman Catholic population, the 
question excited stronger feelings of personal interest than 
in England, the agitation, designed to secure the eventual 
success of the measure, had of late years been carried on 
with a degree of organization and skill that made it formida¬ 
ble, not only to the peace of any ministry, but to the tran¬ 
quillity of the kingdom itself. The leader of this agitation 
was a barrister of the name of Daniel O’Connell, a man by 
his natural talents, by his fertility of resource, by his elo¬ 
quence, and even by the very faults of that eloquence, 
always apt to run into exaggeration and bombast, admirably 
fitted to obtain an influence over an ignorant populace, 
especially over one whose feelings were as easily excited as 
those of the Irish; but, by his want of courage, truth, 
honesty, and disinterestedness, not calculated to acquire the 
respect of the higher classes. By his authority an extensive 
society had beeil formed under the name of the Catholic 
Association, which had for some years exacted very large 
sums under the title of the Catholic Rent from the whole 
Irish population, and had employed their resources to extend 
the authority of the association and of the Roman Catholic 
priesthood so successfully, that in Munster, Leinster, and 
Connaught the poorer class of voters were more under their 
influence than under that of their landlords. 

This fact O’Connell now determined to prove in a most 
decisive manner: though a Roman Catholic could not take 
his seat in parliament, there was no law to prevent his 
being elected by a constituency. Mr. Eitzgerald had vacated 
his seat as member for Clare by his acceptance of office; 
and O’Connell now offered himself as a candidate against 
him, and in July, 1828, was returned by a large majority. 
The duke of Wellington and Peel considered, no doubt with 
truth, that this event made the maintenance of the Roman 
Catholic disabilities impracticable. But there were great 
difficulties in the way of their removal, some being of their 
own creation, as only the year before they had refused to 
form a part of Canning’s ministry, solely because he was 


A.I). 
1828. 





HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


800 



a.d. favourable to a measure which they now were prepared to 
pronounce indispensable. 

The outcry against them both was very general; it was 
most violent against Peel, because he was regarded as the 
more deeply pledged to the principle of maintaining the 
Protestant ascendancy; and when he resigned his seat for 
the University of Oxford, and offered himself for re-election, 
he was defeated by sir Robert Inglis by a great majority. 
The disinclination of the king to emancipation had also to 
be got over, for he entertained a strong opinion against it; 
but, at last, his consent was obtained, and, in 1829, the bill 
introduced by the government for the removal of the Roman 
Catholic disabilities was carried by large majorities in both 
houses of parliament; not without incurring the most vehe¬ 
ment opposition from the high Tory party, whom it alien¬ 
ated from the duke’s government so completely, that they 
began to prefer the idea of even a Whig ministry to one by 
which they had been disappointed, and, as they brought 
themselves to fancy, designedly betrayed. 

It was a year of considerable distress, which the govern¬ 
ment proceeded, though with greatly diminished power, to 
remedy by very large measures of economy and retrench¬ 
ment ; and which encouraged the opposition again to bring 
forward proposals for a reform in parliament, though these 
were at first limited to a motion to confer members on the 
large towns of Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, which 
had never as yet been represented in parliament. This 
motion was defeated, as was one made by O’Connell to 
introduce household suffrage, and vote by ballot; and before 
the agitation for reform could assume any very definite 
shape, the king, whose health had been for some time decay¬ 
ing, died, expiring on the 20th of June, 1830, in the sixty- 
eighth year of his age. 

Had he been born in a private station, George IV. would 
very probably have been an amiable and distinguished, per¬ 
haps even a great man; for he had an excellent natural 
disposition, and very considerable abilities of various kinds; 
but unhappily his position perverted the first by the tempta¬ 
tions which it afforded him to selfish indulgence, and caused 
the second to be wasted in mere superficial accomplishments. 
His regency was marked by most glorious success in war; 
his reign by a very great amelioration of the general condi¬ 
tion of the people. He died at a time fortunate for his own 


WILLIAM IV. 


801 


LXXI.] 

comfort, wlien great changes were at hand, to which he a.d. 
would perhaps with difficulty have been brought to consent, 1830. 
but which he would have found himself wholly powerless to 
avert or to delay. 


CHAPTER LXXI. 

WILLIAM IV. 


CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Austria, a.d. 
Francis II. 

Ferdinand . . 1835 

France. 

Charles X. 

Louis Philippe . 1830 


Russia. a.d. 
Nicholas I. 

Prussia. 

Fred. William III. 

Spain. 
Ferdinand VII. 

Maria Isabella . 1833 


Portugal, a.d. 
John VI. 

Maria di Gloria . 1826 
Popes. 

Leo XII. 

Gregory XVI. . 1831 
Belgium. 

Leopold . . . 1830 


The duke of Clarence, the next brother of the late king, 1830. 
succeeded to the throne by the title of William IV. He 
had been bred a sailor, in whicli profession, in his youth, he 
had seen a good deal of actual service, though he had been 
engaged in no battle; and he had lately filled the office of 
lord high admiral, till within the last few months, when, in 
consequence of his differences with officers of more practical 
knowledge, he was removed by the duke of Wellington. He 
was supposed to be inclined to a more liberal view of politics 
than his elder brothers ; and the reforming party throughout 
the kingdom formed great hopes from his accession. 

He was in his sixty-fifth year, so that his reign could 
hardly be expected to be a very long one; but it was marked 
by most important events. The question of parliamentary 
reform had been of late exciting increased attention, and the 
party of the reformers had gained great additional strength 
from the restoration of the Protestant Dissenters and 
Roman Catholics to their civil privileges; a strength which 
was further augmented by the revolution in Prance, which 
expelled Charles X. from his throne, just at the time when 
William IV. dissolved the parliament. These circumstances 
had great influence on the new elections, and combined to 
produce the return to the house of commons of a majority of 
members favourable to great alterations. Parliament met 
in November, and lord Grey, who from his first entrance 
into the house of commons had been a steady advocate of 
reform, took the earliest opportunity of pressing his views 

3 E 














802 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. upon the ministry. The duke of Wellington, in reply, 
I8:i0— declared himself incredulous of the possibility of effecting 
lo31 ‘ any real improvement in a constitution which, in spite ot its 
apparent anomalies, worked so well as our existing system 
of representation, and announced his resolution to resist any 
attempt to alter it. This declaration produced great discon¬ 
tent ; in the city of London it excited suqh violent feelings 
that the king, who had intended to dine with the lord 
mayor on the 9th of November, was advised to abandon his 
design, lest he should be insulted in the streets; and before 
the end of the month the ministers received a decisive defeat 
in the house of commons, and resigned their office. 

The new prime minister was lord Grey; and the cabinet 
was composed partly of Whigs: Mr. Brougham becoming 
lord chancellor with the title of lord Brougham, lord Lans- 
downe being president of the council, and lord Althorpe 
chancellor of the exchequer; partly of Tories of Mr. Can¬ 
ning’s party: lord Palmerston being foreign secretary, lord 
Melbourne home secretary, and lord Goderich secretary for 
the colonies, while the duke of Richmond, though commonly 
classed among the high Tories, was made postmaster-general, 
he having, as it were, a vested interest in parliamentary 
reform, in favour of which, the very first motion ever made 
had been brought forward by his grandfather, shortly before 
the beginning of Mr. Pitt’s first administration. Lord 
Wellesley became lord steward, the Irish secretary was Mr. 
Stanley, now lord Derby, and lord John Russell, who had of 
late taken a very prominent part in the debates, and whose 
influence from this time forward increased with great 
rapidity, was paymaster of the forces; but these three were 
not in the cabinet. 

The ministry began at once to apply themselves to the 
preparation of a bill which, to use the language in which 
lord Grey described its requisites beforehand, “should 
secure to the people a due influence in the great council of 
the nation, and should also secure, by that means, confidence 
and satisfaction in the determinations of parliament.” But 
even while they were engaged in the deliberations necessary 
for this object, their attention was distracted by the affairs 
of Ireland, where O’Connell, who had found the agitation 
for Roman Catholic emancipation very profitable, had now 
invented a pretext for a fresh agitation, in urging his follow¬ 
ers to clamour for a repeal of the union, while he stimulated 


LXX1.] WILLIAM IV. 803 

their hopes by language more inflammatory than ever. So 
manifestly seditious were many of his harangues, that the 
government at last decided on prosecuting him for sedition; 
and though he pleaded guilty, the ministry subsequently 
found themselves so greatly in need of his aid to carry 
the reform bill that they never brought him up for judg¬ 
ment. 

At the beginning of March lord John Russell introduced 
the reform bill into the house of commons ; but the changes 
proposed by it were so much more extensive than had been 
anticipated that many members previously in favour of some 
reform were startled, and the second reading was only carried 
by a majority of one; while, a few days afterwards, the minis¬ 
ters were defeated on the question whether the entire num¬ 
ber of members of the house of commons should be reduced 
by sixty-two, or should remain at its former amount. 

Parliament, though hardly six months old, was at once 
dissolved; and fresh elections took place, attended in many 
places with the most outrageous violence. Many of the 
leading reformers did not scruple at the most flagrant mis¬ 
representation of the acts and motives of their opponents, 
exciting the people to deeds of personal violence; while 
the populace, who had been led to conceive the most absurd 
expectations of personal advantage from the bill, were but 
too ready to follow their guidance, and broke out into every 
kind of excess. The demagogue in Shakespeare promises 
his followers that he would cause seven halfpenny loaves to 
be sold for a penny, and that he would make it felony to 
drink small beer; and hopes of a result of the reform bill 
somewhat similar were confidently entertained not only by 
the uneducated classes, but by those who had not ignorance 
to plead as their excuse for the preposterous delusions 
which they cherished in others, and professed to believe in 
themselves. One of the warmest and at the same time 
shrewdest advocates of the proposed change jested upon 
the pictures with which they deceived themselves, and which 
scarcely needed exaggeration to make them ridiculous, say¬ 
ing that “ young ladies who were never asked to dance 
expected at once to be provided with partners, they who 
had never been asked to marry expected to have husbands 
found for them; schoolboys believed that gerunds and 
supines would be abolished, and that currant tarts would 
fall in price; bad poets made sure of readers for their epics, 

3 r 2 


A.D 

1831 






804 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. and fools would be disappointed as usual.” But tbe folly 
1831— 0 f tp ese anticipations became too serious for ridicule when 
1832 ‘ it led, as it did in this instance, to rapine, incendiarism, and 
murder. 

The new parliament carried tbe bill through tbe house of 
commons by a large majority, but the lords threw it out; 
and the populace, infuriated at their disappointment, broke 
out into the most frightful disturbances; with the exception 
of the riots in London, in 1780, no such fearful scenes had 
taken place in the island since the civil wars. At Derby 
the mob forced open the gaol and liberated the prisoners; 
at Nottingham they burnt the ancient castle, once a royal 
residence, because it now belonged to the duke of Newcastle, 
who took a prominent part in opposition to all reform; 
and at Bristol they burnt the greater part of the public 
buildings; the Mansion-house, the Custom-house, the bi¬ 
shop’s palace, the gaols, and great numbers of private 
dwellings were set on fire; a vast amount of property was 
destroyed, nor could order be restored till the troops were 
called out, who by frequent charges dispersed the rioters, 
but not till nearly 100 had been killed and wounded; many 
being also burnt in the houses to which they had set fire, 
and which they were engaged in plundering. 

At the next meeting of parliament the ministers again 
brought in the reform bill, having modified it in some 
respects, with the hope of softening the opposition of the 
peers; and the alterations which had been made did induce 
that body to read the bill a second time, though it again 
left the ministers in a minority on questions of detail. 
Lord Grey then proposed to the king to allow him to 
overbear their opposition by a large creation of new peers, 
and, on his majesty’s refusal, resigned his office. But 
the duke of Wellington, to whom the king entrusted the 
arrangements for a new ministry, found himself unable to 
form one; and consequently the king, being forced to recur 
to the former government, had no resource except to 
comply with their demands. The injury with which the 
constitution was threatened was, however, averted by the 
prudence of the opposition peers, who retired from the 
house, in preference to persisting in an opposition which 
they knew must now be not only ineffectual, but pernicious; 
and, on the 7th of June, 1832, the reform bill received the 
royal assent. Its most important provisions may be de- 




WILLIAM IV. 


805 





id 

)f 


i 


. 



LXXI.] 

scribed in a few words. Many towns wliicli liad gradually 
grown up to wealth and importance, and which were hitherto 
unrepresented, such as Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, 
and Sheffield, received members; others, in which the cor¬ 
poration alone had hitherto been the electing body, received 
a large addition to their constituencies, by the admission of 
householders, who paid a certain amount of rent, to vote; 
many small boroughs were disfranchised ; additional mem¬ 
bers were given to the counties ; and in them also the con¬ 
stituencies were increased by the enfranchisement of tenants 
at will; while the expense of elections, which had risen 
to a frightful height, was diminished by the time allowed 
for each being reduced, in the case of a borough to one 
day, and in that of a county to two. The greater part of 
these changes were both reasonable and desirable. Even 
the most questionable of them, the disfranchisement of the 
small boroughs, was irresistibly plausible, though not carried 
out with much impartiality, and though founded on false 
reasoning ; for the places now disfranchised had not, as was 
commonly believed, decayed from their former importance, 
but, for the most part, had never been of any consequence 
at any time, having had the privilege of returning members 
granted them as a favour to some rich man, under whose 
influence the borough might be, and in Cornwall, with 
the object of increasing the authority of the crown, which 
the stannaries and several ancient privileges had at one 
time rendered paramount in that county h 

So extensive a measure would hardly have been proposed, 
had it not been for the positive declaration of the duke of 
Wellington against any reform whatever; and yet even 
those most opposed to it at the time may now see that it 
was better that it should have been, as it was, sufficiently 
comprehensive to avoid the necessity of any subsequent 
measure to complete it, than a scanty concession, an instal¬ 
ment, as it were, of what the people might reasonably, 


A.D. 

1832. 


1 There was no part of the ancient parliamentary constitution that worked 
better than these small boroughs, which had formed the avenue by which every 
man of eminence since the revolution had entered parliament. It is owing to 
the recollection of this fact, that that honest and sensible reformer, lord Camp¬ 
bell, calls them “ so convenient and useful, that we cannot help regretting the 
scandal which made their abolition necessary, for T fear we cannot deny that 
they sent to parliament members more eloquent and better able to serve the 
state than the new boroughs with larger constituencies which have been sub¬ 
stituted for them.”—Life of lord Cowper,—Lives of Chancellors, iv. 287. 










HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


806 


[CH. 


1833. 


a.d. or, at least, plausibly claim, serving rather to whet their 
1832— appetites for further innovation than to pacify them. 

Although, however, both the reform bill and the emanci¬ 
pation of the Roman Catholics were wise, just, and necessary 
measures, the undeniable fact that their success was mainly 
to be ascribed to intimidation was productive of great 
mischief, by leading artful demagogues to fancy, and to 
persuade the populace that similar violence on their part 
would obtain for them whatever other concessions they 
might desire; and this argument was used in Ireland by 
O’Connell to inflame the peasantry of that country to 
demand the extinction of tithes, the abolition of the Irish 
Protestant Church, and the repeal of the union. The whole 
of that island soon became a scene of the most fearful 
outrage; the clergy who endeavoured to procure the pay¬ 
ment of the tithe due to them were murdered without 
mercy, their barns and their houses were burnt, and uni¬ 
versal lawlessness seemed almost established throughout 
the land. The government acted with vigour. They brought 
in a bill regulating the future management of Church pro¬ 
perty in Ireland in a manner calculated to remove many of 
the complaints which had been urged against the Church, 
and introduced an act, which was speedily passed by both 
houses, called a coercion bill, giving the lord-lieutenant 
power to prevent all public meetings which he might deem 
dangerous, and to put counties or districts in which outrages 
were rife under martial law. These laws had some effect, 
though not all that w r as desired, in tranquillizing the country, 
and gave the ministers time to apply their attention to 
other objects, the most important of which were the altera¬ 
tion of the poor-law in England, and the abolition of slavery 
in the West Indies. 

As long as ten years before the question of the gradual 
entire abolition of slavery had occupied the attention of 
the existing ministry; but the local legislatures in the 
different West Indian islands had been unwilling to take 
any steps ’which might seem like a recognition of the right 
of the mother country to interfere in the matter. Their 
conduct in this respect had excited great discontent among 
the negroes, leading, in some instances, to alarming riots, 
and, at length, at the beginning of 1832, a most formidable 
insurrection broke out over the whole island of Jamaica, 






WILLI A.M IY. 


807 


LXXI.] 

■which even the troops, who were called out, could not a.d. 
quell without great difficulty. These circumstances, and 1833. 
the general course of events in the West Indies, led the 
government to think that it would not be possible to main¬ 
tain the system of slavery much longer, while at the same 
time they were deeply imbued with the growing feeling 
that the same principles of morality, which had required 
the abolition of the trade in slaves, equally required the 
extinction of the whole system of slavery. At the same 
time they felt that it could not be extinguished without 
diminishing the value of West Indian property, that that 
value was so great that it concerned the interest of the 
whole kingdom that it should not be seriously impaired, and 
that, moreover, the property of the planters in slaves had 
been recognized by so many laws that, apart from all con¬ 
siderations of policy, they had a positive right to com¬ 
pensation, if this property were put an end to by parliament. 
After much consideration and negotiation with the planters, 
a bill was passed, at once abolishing slavery under its exist¬ 
ing conditions, but binding the slaves to a kind of appren¬ 
ticeship for seven years, during which they were to be 
compelled to work for their masters three-fourths of their 
time, and allotting a sum of 20,000,0007 to be divided 
among the different landowners in proportion to the number 
of slaves which each of them possessed. To the great 
honour of the British people this vast sum was cheerfully 
voted, not to get rid of an injury, but to relieve the nation 
of what was now felt to be a sin. At a later period the 
term of apprenticeship was abridged; and in the summer 
of 1838 every vestige of slavery was abolished in the British 
possessions. 

After the experience of nearly twenty years this measure, 
then warmly advocated by all classes in England, and 
assented to by those personally interested, has been found 
productive of great and apparently incurable injury to the 
proprietors of the West Indian islands, while it is con¬ 
fidently maintained by many persons that the condition of 
the negro has not been practically improved by it. The 
alteration in our new poor-law was a measure of less ques¬ 
tionable wisdom and advantage. Under the system of local 
administration poor-rates had been allowed to increase to 
an alarming extent, many working men having been relieved 
from them, merely in order to save their masters from 










808 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1833— 

1834. 


paying them fair wages, till, at last, the sum annually col¬ 
lected reached the enormous amount of seven millions of 
money. The administration of these laws was now placed 
under a central hoard of commissioners, responsible to 
parliament for its proper working; parishes were con¬ 
solidated into unions for the purpose of securing a better 
regulated economy; and though the partial abolition of the 
system of giving relief out of the workhouse has led to some 
hardships, there is reason to hope that the new plan, which 
has certainly relieved the rate-payer, has begun also to 
create a better and more independent feeling on the part 
of those who are most liable to be reduced to apply to the 
parish for relief. 

Before the passing of this new poor-law act, however, 
lord Grey had quitted office. In spite of the coercion bill 
the Irish agitation had become so formidable, that he was 
led to propose a further reduction of the Irish Church esta¬ 
blishment, to which lord Goderich (who had lately been 
created earl of Ripon), the duke of Richmond, Mr. Stanley, 
and sir James Graham, the first lord of the admiralty, 
entertained such strong objections, that they resigned their 
posts. A few days later lord Althorpe also resigned, in 
consequence of differences with lord Grey about other 
matters connected with the government of Ireland; and 
lord Grey, feeling his administration fatally weakened by 
all these secessions, also quitted the treasury, and was 
succeeded by lord Melbourne, a man universally popular 
for his high-bred manners, his agreeable, social qualities, 
and his genuine kindness of heart, but who had not as yet 
given any indication of high statesmanlike abilities, or of 
that energy of character and resolute industry which often 
in some degree supply their place, and which are as indis¬ 
pensable as any other qualities to the prime minister of a 
country with such large interests and such complicated 
relations as those of Great Britain. Under lord Melbourne 
lord Althorpe resumed his post of chancellor of the 
exchequer, but was compelled to relinquish it in the autumn, 
in consequence of the death of his father, lord Spencer, 
which removed him to the house of peers; and this event 
finally broke up the Whig ministry. 

Sir Robert Peel became the new prime minister; but, 
though the late government had lost a great deal of that 
popularity which the party in general had derived from the 




LXXII.] VICTORIA. 809 

reform bill, the country was not yet ripe for so complete a 
change; and a fresh parliament, which the new minister 
summoned, was so unfavourable to him, that, in the spring 
of 1835, he also w r as forced to resign, and lord Mel¬ 
bourne’s administration, with hut little alteration, returned 
to office. 

The next two years were marked by no striking events; 
and in June, 1837, king William died, and was succeeded 
on the British throne by his niece Victoria, the only 
daughter of the duke of Kent, and our present gracious 
sovereign; while, as the Salic law, which forbids the suc¬ 
cession of females to the crown, prevails in Hanover, that 
kingdom was now separated from Great Britain, and became 
the inheritance of the duke of Cumberland, who ascended 
its throne under the title of Ernest I. 


CHAPTER LXXII. 


VICTORIA. 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 


Austria, a.d. 
Francis II. 

Ferdinand . . 1835 

Francis Joseph . 1848 
Prussia. 

Fred. William III. 
Fred. William IV. 1840 


Spain. a.d. 
Maria Isabella. 

Portugal. 

Maria di Gloria. 

Pedro V. . . 1853 


Popes. a.d. 
Gregory XVI. 
PiusVill. . . 1846 

Pius IX. . . .1846 

Belgium. 

Leopold. 


Queen Victoria had just completed her eighteenth year 
when she was thus called upon to rule over the most exten¬ 
sive dominions in the world. It is remarkable that the 
reigns of all our preceding female sovereigns have been 
periods of war and disquietude, always, however, except 
under the brief rule of Mary I., successfully encountered, 
and the era now commencing was not destined to differ 
from them in this particular. Our history will close before 
our gracious sovereign has nearly reached middle age, or 
swayed the sceptre for a single score of years; and already 
she has seen fearful riots and treason both in England and 
Ireland, revolt in Canada, long murderous warfare and un¬ 
precedented disaster in India, war in the Levant, war in 
China, and at last, after nearly forty years of peace, war 
also in Europe. In the happier part of her career she has 
likewise resembled her two last predecessors, for she has 


A.D. 

1834— 

1835. 


1837. 







810 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. seen all these dangers and miseries surmounted; she has 

1837. S een the whole other native dominions restored to tranquillity, 
prosperity, and sincere loyalty ; she has seen the calamities 
which befel her troops in India avenged and effaced by a 
series of victories; she has seen her arms and her policy 
triumph alike in the eastern and western extremities of 
Asia; she has seen Russian ferocity defeated and humbled, 
Russian ambition and aggression beaten back and bridled ; 
so that, having thus disarmed jealousy, intimidated enmity, 
and conciliated disaffection, she may reasonably hope for the 
future to enjoy tranquillity, earned and made sweeter by 
her previous anxiety and trouble; happier, should such be 
her lot, by her example and encouragement to foster among 
her people the arts of peace and the blessings of education 
and refinement, which no sovereign has ever been better able 
to appreciate, than whilst admiring the martial exploits of 
her soldiers, or with her own hands dispensing the rewards 
of their valour, or, more gracefully still, showing a womanly 
sympathy in their sufferings. 

The first disturbances broke out in Canada, where indeed 
they had been for some time apprehended. Canada is di¬ 
vided into two provinces, the upper and the lower, of which 
the Upper, or inland one, was generally united and loyal; 
but the Lower province, having a more mixed population of 
Trench and English, was constantly distracted by the dis¬ 
putes between the two races, the former of which was, per¬ 
haps naturally, not averse to see their connexion with Great 
Britain weakened, if not terminated. Recent events in 
Europe, by the encouragement which they had afforded to 
revolutionary ideas, had strengthened this feeling; and a 
large party, under the guidance of a man of Trench ex¬ 
traction, named Papineau, began to clamour for measures 
which would have had the effect of rendering the govern¬ 
ment entirely republican. They were of course refused, 
and Papineau and his chief associates became so furious at 
their disappointment, and so openly seditious in the lan¬ 
guage which they held to the populace, that lord Gosford, 
the governor, determined on arresting them. Though he 
was far from being aware how general was the disaffection 
which they had excited, he took the precaution of sending a 
small body of troops with the civil officers ; but the soldiers 
found themselves opposed by 1500 men well armed and 
strongly posted, and were forced to retire with some loss. 






VICTORIA. 


811 


LXXII.] 

It was not the only occasion on which the disaffected party 
ventured to measure their strength with the queen’s troops ; 
hut fortunately the commander-in-chief in the province, sir 
John Colborne, "was one of the most distinguished and 
skilful officers in the whole British army, and, as there was 
now open rebellion, he went in person against the rebels, 
and, though not without some loss, easily routed them. 
The flame of insurrection had even spread to Upper Canada, 
where a man of the name of Mackenzie endeavoured to sur¬ 
prise Toronto, hoping for the aid of a body of Americans, 
who, without the sanction of their government, seized an 
island in the St. Lawrence belonging to Great Britain, and 
attacked some of the Canadian villages ; but sir Francis 
Head, the governor of the upper province, and colonel 
Macnab beat back the rebels, and inflicted severe chastise¬ 
ment on the Americans, and the home government sent out 
lord Durham, as governor, with large powers for the sup¬ 
pression of the present evils and the prevention of similar 
dangers in future. 

Unhappily, lord Durham entertained an exaggerated idea 
of the authority with which he was thus invested, and some 
of the measures which he adopted were so contrary to the 
principles of British law that the ministers at home had no 
choice but to disavow them. He at once threw up his 
commission, and left the government to sir John Colborne, 
who administered it for some time with great firmness and 
wisdom. The disavowal of lord Durham’s proceedings, and 
his consequent retirement, acted as an encouragement to 
the rebels, who assembled in greater numbers than ever, 
encountering a strong force which Colborne sent against 
them with no less than 4000 men, while 500 Americans, 
with several pieces of artillery, crossed the frontier to sup¬ 
port them; but both bodies were decisively routed, and so 
rapid was the restoration of tranquillity and confidence 
that, out of the vast number of prisoners who were taken, 
Colborne thought it sufficient to execute only two, and to 
sentence a few more to transportation. He was deservedly 
raised to the peerage by the title of lord Seaton, and since 
his time the important province of Canada has been as 
much distinguished for its fidelity and loyalty as any other 
portion of the queen’s colonial dominions. 

In 1837 and the two following years there was severe distress 
in England, arising partly from a succession of bad harvests; 


A.D. 

1837 — 
1839. 






812 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [ CH * 

a.d. and this distress producing general discontent, enabled a 
| 839 — set of artful demagogues to inflame the people by repre- 
sentations that their sufferings arose from their not yet 
having a proper weight in the legislature, which could never 
be obtained by them till a fresh reform bill should be passed, 
the chief enactments of which were to establish universal 
suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, and the aboli¬ 
tion of the property qualification for members of parliament. 
These, and one or two articles of minor importance, they 
called the people’s charter, to which they were entitled as 
freemen, and its advocates assumed the name of Chartists. 
They soon became a numerous and formidable body, and 
when their petitions were rejected by parliament they 
sought to intimidate opposition by large public meetings, 
which soon led to most alarming riots. At Birmingham, 
after parading the streets, they attacked the houses of all 
whom they thought unfavourable to them, and presently, 
excited by their own violence,began a general destruction 
of property, dragging furniture from the dwelling-houses 
and goods from the shops into the streets, making a general 
bonfire of them, and then setting fire to the houses them¬ 
selves. At Newport, in Monmouthshire, an outbreak oc¬ 
curred with all the forms of a regular insurrection. A 
person of the name of Frost, who, though only a linen- 
draper, had been lately made a magistrate, collected 5000 
men in arms, and attacked the town at night with the in¬ 
tention of surprising and overpowering the soldiers quartered 
there, and then raising the whole country in rebellion. 
Fortunately, previous information of his design had reached 
the mayor and chief magistrates, and a small body of troops 
were prepared to receive them ; they took post in the prin¬ 
cipal inn, and when the insurgents attacked it replied to 
their fire with such vigour that the assailants fled. Frost 
and some others of the ringleaders were tried, convicted, 
and, as the government forbore to execute them, were 
transported for life : and even this penalty was remitted in 
1856, and Frost was permitted to return to England. 

At the same time the progress of events in the East 
threatened a rupture with France. Mehemet Ali, the 
pacha of Egypt, was anxious to render his authority inde¬ 
pendent of the sultan, and his ambition had brought on 
war between him and the Sublime Porte, in which he had 
gained considerable advantages over the Turkish troops. 




VICTORIA. 


813 


LXXII.] 


The French were undisguisedly favourable to his projects, 
and, as the other great powers of Europe, especially England, 
were very jealous of France obtaining a preponderating influ¬ 
ence in Egypt; England, Russia, and Austria entered into 
a convention with Turkey, according to which, the sultan 
agreed to concede a portion of Mehemet’s demands, while 
the allies promised to compel him to recede from the rest. 
Mehemet, however, would not submit, and, in consequence, 
we sent a powerful fleet, under the command of sir Robert 
Stopford and admiral Napier, to the coast of Syria, which 
bombarded Beyrout and Acre, took those towns from 
Mehemet, and restored them to the Turks, and thus speedily 
compelled the pacha to accept the terms which had been 
offered him. Fortunately, just at this moment the ministry 
of M. Thiers, in France, who was‘eager to support him, 
was replaced by the more pacific cabinet of M. Guizot, who 
was inclined to consider the maintenance of the Turkish 
power unimpaired as the line of policy the most important 
of all to the tranquillity and security of Europe. 

It was well for us that European war was thus averted; 
for in India we had become involved in hostilities which 
severely taxed the whole energies of the empire. The 
governors-general, since lord Hastings, had been men of 
judgment and vigour very inferior to his. Lord William 
Bentinck had in some respects improved the internal condi¬ 
tion of the country; he had entirely ridded it of the Thugs, 
a band of assassins who had long infested the north of the 
Deccan; and he had greatly checked the practice of the 
suttee, the name given to the burning of Hindoo widows on 
the funeral pile of their husbands: but at the same time, 
in pursuance of his views of retrenchment and economy, he 

had diminished the militarv force which had hitherto been 

%> # , , 

kept up, till it was scarcely more than sufficient to maintain 
the authority of the company in time of peace. He was 
succeeded by lord Auckland, who occupied himself more with 
the foreign policy of his government, if it may be so called, 
without sufficiently listening to the advice of those to whom 
a long residence in India had given a better acquaintance 
with its affairs. 

The decease of a native prince in India very commonly 
gave rise to disputes concerning the succession to his power ; 
and such an event had lately taken place in Afghanistan, 
an extensive, wild, and mountainous region lying between 


A.D. 

1839— 
1840. 



814 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [*CH. 

a.d. Persia and our Indian dominions. It would occupy too much 
1839-' 0 f our S p aC e to detail the various events which distinguished 
the contest between the competitors for the vacant throne ; 
and it wilj. be sufficient for our purpose to say that it ended 
by two of them dividing the country between themselves. 
Mahmoud, the elder son of the deceased prince, establishing 
himself at Herat, on the north-western frontier, and Dost 
Mahomed, the brother of a former vizier, named Futteh Khan, 
becoming master of the city and province of Cabul, which 
lies at no great distance from the Indus, while Mahmoud’s 
younger brother, Soojah, who had at first usurped the throne, 
was expelled from the country, took refuge at Lahore, with 
Runjeet Singh, the rajah of the Sikhs, and implored the 
assistance of the British. Lord Auckland, hoping to fix 
Cabul and Lahore in Our alliance, determined on restoring 
him to the throne, and in 1839 sent sir John Keane with 
an army to re-establish him in his usurped authority. 
Keane crossed the Indus, stormed Ghuznee, the strongest 
fortress in the district, a division of his army took Jellalabad, 
a city of some importance on the eastern border of the 
country, and in the autumn the whole army entered Cabul, 
and re-established Soojah as shah over the whole of that 
province. 

Those who knew India best foretold that the difficulties 
of the enterprise were only beginning. Nevertheless, lord 
Auckland ventured to recal the greater part of his army, 
leaving a small force in the principal cities, to maintain for 
a while the authority of the restored prince. Sir Willoughby 
Cotton, who was soon replaced by general Elphinstone, was 
given the chief command ; general sir Robert Sale was placed 
at Jellalabad, and general Nott at Candahar, a large city some 
distance to the south. Preparing for a long sojourn in the 
country, Sale, sir William Macnaghten, the political resi¬ 
dent at Cabul, and others, sent for their wives and families; 
and for a brief space all was tranquillity and ease. But 
Soojah’s government was weak; Runjeet Singh died, and 
the Sikhs became less friendly, and though Dost Mahomed, 
who ventured to commence hostilities, was easily defeated, 
and forced to implore Macnaghten’s protection, it was 
soon evident that peace was not settled on a very trustworthy 
foundation. The Affghans in the interior became turbulent, 
and fought two or three actions against Nott, in which they 
were beaten; the governor of Herat was intriguing against 



LXXII.] VICTORIA. 815 

us, and things seemed to indicate a general conspiracy 
throughout the whole of Affghanistan against us, and against 
the prince whom we had set up. 

At last, on the 2nd of November, 1841, it broke out in 
open insurrection in the city of Cabul. A mob suddenly 
attacked the houses of the British officers. One of the 
most distinguished of them, sir Alexander Burnes, with his 
brother and a small body of sepoys, was cut to pieces, and 
success emboldened the insurgents to commit all kinds of 
outrages. Unhappily the British army was stationed, not 
in the city, but in cantonments outside the walls, and 
Elphinstone behaved with unaccountable supineness. He 
had been a brave officer, but he was past the prime of life, 
and in very bad health. He took no steps to crush the 
disturbance in the bud, while it would have been easy to do 
so; a small body of troops, sent with that object by shah 
Soojah, proved useless, and in a few hours the whole city 
was in the possession of the insurgents. Elphinstone and 
Macnaghten sent to Jellalabad and Candahar for reinforce¬ 
ments ; but they could not be expected for some weeks, and 
the supplies and magazines of the army had fallen into the 
hands of the enemy. Elphinstone began to think of a 
capitulation, and even of purchasing a safe retreat by bribing 
the leaders of the insurrection; and the necessity for re¬ 
treating was increased by the news of the revolt having 
spread inland, where one of our regiments had been over¬ 
powered and cut to pieces, and by the failure of an attack 
made by general Shelton upon the insurgents, who had taken 
up a position in front of our camp which enabled them to 
cut off our supplies. 

At the beginning of December the enemy were strength¬ 
ened by the arrival of Akbar Khan, a son of Dost Mahomed ; 
and we also considered his arrival a favourable event, since, 
as his father and brothers were in our hands, it was thought 
that they might be looked upon as hostages for his friendly 
conduct. Negotiations for our evacuatibn of Cabul had been 
already commenced, and, on the 10th of December, the 
terms were fully arranged, we agreeing to quit the province, 
to withdraw our support from shah Soojah, and to restore 
Dost Mahomed to liberty; and the Affghans promising to 
supplv us with provisions and means of transport for our 
baggage in the retreat. 

The agreement had scarcely been completed before the 


A.D. 

1839 — 
1842. 



A.D 

1841- 

1842. 


816 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

Affghans began to show a disposition to violate it, while 
Macnaghten on bis part endeavoured to take advantage of 
dissensions, which already began to arise among some of 
their chiefs, to make arrangements more favourable to lord 
Auckland’s views of policy; but the hopes which were thus 
held out to him were only lures to lead him to his own 
destruction; at a conference with Akbar Khan, on the 
23rd of December, he was murdered, and his mangled 
remains were exhibited in triumph to the populace in the 
great bazaar of the city. The success of this act of trea¬ 
chery stimulated the Affghans to make fresh demands upon 
the British geueral. He gave up the greater part of his 
guns, sent orders to Sale to evacuate Jellalabad, and, on the 
6th of .January, commenced his retreat. Even had the 
country and its inhabitants been friendly, a march through 
that district at that season of the year would have been 
attended with difficulty and hardship, for the road runs 
through a rugged, mountainous district, and often through 
narrow defiles overhung with fearful precipices, while the 
winter in that exposed region is as severe as in the most 
inclement countries of Europe. The retreating army, in¬ 
cluding camp-followers and all its numerous attendants, 
amounted to nearly 17,000 men. The snow, which was 
already deep on the ground, fell fast. No sufficient provi¬ 
sion for shelter or for fuel had been, or perhaps could 
have been made, and the very first night saw many frozen 
to death. 

Erom the first scarcely any appearance of discipline or 
order was kept up. The next day the retreating host was 
attacked by the Affghans, who occupied the high ground 
overlooking the road, from which they kept up a ceaseless 
and unanswered fire on our troops, too dispirited by their 
want of a resolute leader to attempt to make a stand. In a 
narrow defile, known as the Coord Cabul Pass, nearly 3000 
are said to have perished without an effort to save them¬ 
selves, or even to sell their lives dearly by a gallant resist¬ 
ance. Treachery by day, cold and hunger by night, were 
laying low strong men; but others were there besides men. 
In the van rode several ladies, who the year before had 
repaired to Cabul to join their husbands, and who now, with 
hearts sad but as firm as those of the bravest soldiers, shared 
with them the horrors and dangers of the retreat. The 
widowed lady Macnaghten, the worthy wife of the gallant 



VICTORIA. 


817 


LXXII.] 


e 

Sale, her daughter, Mrs. Sturt, and others, some with 
young children, some expecting the speedy birth of children, 
were exposed to the same hardships as the meanest troopers 
in the army. One was wounded ; another saw her husband 
slain before her eyes. One had her infant torn from her 
arms by the savage Affghans. Worse danger threatened 
them, for the animals on which they rode began to faint 
from want ot food ; and at last Elphinstone surrendered the 
married officers and their families to Akbar Kban, who, for 
the promise of a large sum of money, undertook to conduct 
them safely to Peshawur. 

Savage and faithless as he was, he kept his word to some 
extent, preserving his captives in safety, and even in some 
degree of comparative comfort, while the army from which 
they were now separated melted away rapidly under its 
accumulating miseries. On those miseries we will forbear 
to dwell. The cold became more severe, the attacks of the 
Affghans bolder and more incessant. Tor a day or two the 
rearguard, led by general Shelton, kept them a little at bay; 
but he and Elphinstone, having been decoyed to a conference 
with Akbar, were detained as prisoners, and the troops had 
no longer a commander. On the 13th of January one 
haggard, exhausted, wounded man staggered into Jellalabad, 
believing himself to be the only survivor of 17,000 who had 
quitted Cabul but one short week before. 

No such disaster had ever befallen British troops in any 
quarter of the world. It would have been grievous any 
where. In India, where one of the chief foundations of our 
power is the belief which the natives entertain of our invin¬ 
cibility, it threatened to be ruinous. Lord Auckland, how¬ 
ever, did not propose to make any effort to retrieve it, but 
was contented with sending general George Pollock, with a 
small force, to Peshawur to co-operate in securing the safe 
retreat of Sale and Nott, who, with equal courage and judg¬ 
ment, had refused obedience to the order which bade them 
abandon Candahar and Jellalabad. But the ministry at 
home had lately been changed, and a new governor-general 
was on his way to Bengal. On the last day of February, 
1812, lord Ellenborough landed, and his arrival was the 
beginning of a bolder and more successful policy. He was 
equally with his predecessor resolved to withdraw the troops 
from Affghanistan, where there was no object to be gained 
by retaining them; but he was also resolved first to strike a 

3 G 


A.D. 

1842. 





818 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. blow which should retrieve our credit in that country, and 

1842. gbow that we were not driven from it, but that our retire¬ 
ment was the voluntary result of our own policy. In these 
wise views he was gallantly assisted by Sale, who was holding 
Jellalabad with indomitable resolution. As soon as he 
heard of Pollock’s arrival at Peshawur he sent letters to 
him, eagerly begging for prompt succour, and telling him 
the straits to which he was reduced. But in the mean 
time he continued to strengthen his defences and to repel ' 
attacks as if no such difficulties surrounded him. A fearful 
earthquake levelled the principal fortifications with the dust. 
He repaired them with such speed that Akbar, who com¬ 
manded the besiegers, had no time to take advantage of the 
opening which Providence itself seemed to have made for 
him. Sale’s provisions began to fail. He killed his camels 
and beasts of burden, and, when they were eaten, supplied 
and, at the same time, encouraged his troops by some suc¬ 
cessful sallies ; and at last, on the 6th of April, poured forth 
with his whole garrison, routed Akbar, destroyed his camp, 
and compelled him to a precipitate retreat. 

The very day before Pollock had begun his march from 
Peshawur to relieve him. His previous inactivity had been 
caused by the necessity of waiting for further reinforcements 
for the more extensive operations which were now meditated, 
and for means of transport, which were required to be 
unusually large, since he had to carry provisions for Sale’s 
men as well as for his own. His way lay through the 
Khybur Pass, one of the most formidable of all the moun¬ 
tain defiles, and in which, at the beginning of the year, the 
enemy had defeated a strong detachment of our troops: 
but Pollock’s measures were taken with such combined 
prudence and vigour that all attempts to stop his advance 
were fruitless. He seized upon the heights which com¬ 
manded the pass before a man entered it, and then steadily 
forced all the barriers which the enemy had erected. They 
offered him no further resistance, and he soon reached Jel¬ 
lalabad, where he was hailed with joy and thankfulness by 
the heroic garrison, who had so long held their post amid 
such unparalleled difficulties. 

Nott had held Candahar with equal firmness, dealing 
one or two heavy blows on the enemy, who besieged him, 
and at last expelling all the natives from the city to avoid 
being endangered by their co-operation with those outside 



VICTORIA. 


819 


L LXXII.] 

the walls. The return of spring brought ‘news of Sale’s a.d. 
relief, and encouraged him to plan more active offensive 
operations; but, in the mean time, a revolution had taken 
place in the country. At the beginning of April shah 
Soojah was murdered, and civil war began to rage in Cabul. 
Akbar Khan, thinking that his possession of our female 
prisoners afforded him a favourable opportunity, tried to 
open a separate negotiation with Pollock, who willingly 
promised to pay a large ransom for their release, and also 
to procure the liberation of the women of Akbar’s family, 
who were in the power of the British; but, when the 
Affghan chief saw that Pollock and Sale remained at 
Jellalabad, he attributed their inaction to weakness, and 
rose in his demands. 

The delay, however, which encouraged him was caused 
neither by weakness, nor by hesitation, but partly by the 
difficulty of combining operations with Nott, who was at 
a considerable distance, and partly by want of the means of 
transport for the baggage and supplies! At last all these 
embarrassments were overcome. In August Pollock and Nott 
both began to advance on Cabul. Nott took G-huznee, which 
had again fallen into the hands of the Affghans in March, 
and, in accordance with a special command of lord Ellen- 
borough’s, carried off the celebrated gates of Somnauth from 
the tomb of sultan Mahmoud. Many a strong fort fell 
before his advancing brigade, and one or two bloody skir¬ 
mishes showed the Affghans the impossibility of making 
any effectual resistance. At last, on the 17th of September, 
he reached Cabul, and found Pollock already there. Putteh 
Jung, the son of the murdered shah, had taken refuge in 
his camp, and accompanied his march. In vain large 
squadrons of enemies occupied a formidable defile in his 
front, known as the Jugdaluk Pass; they were driven from 
their stronghold with great slaughter. Akbar, terrified at 
his progress, tried to arrest it first by fresh negotiation, 
and afterwards by offering battle at Tezeen. The terms 
which he proposed were rejected, the army which he com¬ 
manded was routed, and, on the 15th of September, Pollock 
entered Cabul in triumph, and installed Putteh Jung on 
his father’s throne. 

But he felt that his triumph was incomplete while British 
ladies remained in Akbar’s power. That, chief, after his 
late defeat, had removed his prisoners into the interior of 

3 o 2 





820 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

A.b. the country, threatening, if his terms were refused, to curry 

1842. them into a life-long captivity in Turkistan. Pollock at 
once sent a strong squadron in pursuit, of which Sale him¬ 
self was one of the commanders. It may well be supposed 
that no time was lost; but before the pursuers could over¬ 
take them their liberty was secured. The commander of 
the force appointed to conduct them had been won over 
by a heavy bribe to lead them to the British quarters, and 
they w r ere on their way thither when they were met by the 
pursuing cavalry, and restored to their husbands, from 
whom they had so lately feared that they were parted for 
ever. One Affghan chief still remained in arms. His 
force was dispersed by a detachment entrusted by Pollock 
to general McCaskill; and then the British general, having 
triumphed over all his enemies, prepared to quit the 
country. He first destroyed the defences of Jellalabad; 
and, to leave a lasting mark of his power, he burnt the 
great bazaar in Cabul, where the body of the murdered 
Macnaghten had been exposed to the gaze of the populace. 
On the 12th of October the army passed out of the gates 
of the city, marching steadily towards our own territories; 
and in December the campaign was terminated by a grand 
review at Perozepoor, and by the release, on our part, of all 
the Affghan prisoners in our power. 

War now followed fast upon war; but we may be more 
brief in our detail of the several events which distiuguished 
them, and led them all to a successful issue, than we have 
been in the narration of the one great disaster which threw 
a shade over our renown, and for a while threatened our 
power in India, but which, being borne with fortitude, 
and retrieved with gallantry, in its ultimate effects perhaps 
even added to our reputation, by showing that the courage 
of Britons is not affected by good or bad success, but shines 
as brightly and as enduringly amid danger and calamity as 
in the more cheering hours of prosperity and victory. 

The Affghan war drew with it the necessity of occupying 
Scinde, the country on each side of the lower part of the 
Indus, the ameers or princes of which had long governed 
it with the most ruthless tyranny, and who, though divided 
among themselves by disputes respecting the supreme 
authority, were at all times inclined to combine in treachery 
towards the British, and were encouraged by our disasters 
in Cabul to form an open confederacy against our power. 




LXXII.] VICTORIA. 821 

Treaties into which we had entered in former times with 
the ameers permitted us to occupy the country with an 
armed force; and lord Ellenborough now sent sir Charles 
Napier, a veteran of the peninsular war, with a small army 
to check their hostility by his presence. The ameers were 
brave men; the Beloochees, who composed the greater part 
of their army, were among the most fearless soldiers of the 
East; and, confiding in their courage and great superiority 
of numbers, they commenced operations against Napier, 
threatening his communications, and intercepting his de¬ 
spatches. His was not a temper to be trifled with. He 
determined to strike terror into them at once, and by an 
enterprise which for boldness, skill, and success has scarcely 
a parallel in the history of war, he left behind him all his 
army but 500 men, and with that small force threw himself 
into the desert, to surprise a fortress called Emaun Ghur, 
which, apart from the difficulty of reaching it, the natives 
all looked upon as impregnable. They were so panic-struck 
at the audacity of his movement, that they deserted it at 
his approach, and he blew it up, and returned to the banks 
of the Indus. 

Thinking that they might be daunted by this exploit, 
lord Ellenborough offered the ameers a new treaty; but 
they were resolved on war, and felt so certain of victory, 
that they even decided beforehand on what was to be done 
with the defeated British. All were to be massacred but 
one; that one, Napier himself, was to be kept in perpetual 
captivity, with an iron ring through his nose, chained to 
the wails of their palace, as a lasting memorial of their 
triumph. 

Such were their expectations; but they were doomed 
soon to experience the truth of our western proverb, that 
it is not well to sell the bear’s skin before one has caught 
him. Napier advanced to Meeanee, a village a little to 
the north of Hyderabad, the capital of the country; and 
on the 17th of February, 1843, a terrible battle took place. 
The host of the ameers numbered 35,000 men. The British 
force was barely 2500. The brother of the conqueror, the 
eloquent historian of Wellington’s achievements in Spain, 
has recorded in spirit-stirring language how, thick as 
standing corn, and gorgeous as a garden of flowers, the 
Beloochees stood in their many-coloured garments and 
turbans; how their swords flashed in the sun, and their 


A.D. 

1842— 

1843. 











A.D. 

1843. 


822 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

shouts filled the plain; how gallantly they rushed upon our 
ranks, and how fearlessly they were repelled. Even in the 
practised hands of these brave horsemen the sweeping sabre 
proved no match for the rapid firing and firmly-held bayonet of 
the British infantry, and, after some hours of terrible struggle, 
our victory was complete. Its fruit was instant in the fall 
of Hyderabad, reputed one of the richest cities in the East, 
though the treasure which fell into the hands of the con¬ 
querors was far from equalling their expectations, or the 
reports that had prevailed respecting it. 

The ameers, however, had still a large army on foot, 
under Shere Mahomed, the bravest of their body, who had 
earned the surname of the Lion by many a deed of daring, 
and Napier had to prepare for another battle with him. 
By forming an intrenched camp with ostentatious care, 
and making a parade of caution, which the Lion interpreted 
as a sign of fear, he detained him in the neighbourhood till 
reinforcements raised his army to 5000 men; and then, as 
the enemy amounted to only five times his own numbers, 
he fell upon them in the neighbourhood of Hyderabad, 
utterly discomfited them, and completed the subjugation of 
the whole country, which lord Ellenborough annexed to the 
company’s dominions, bestowing the government of it, as a 
fitting reward, on the hero who had conquered it. 

Before the end of the same year disputes arose about 
the succession to the supreme authority in Gualior, a small 
Mahratta state to the south of Delhi, which compelled us to 
interfere in a warlike manner in its affairs; and sir Hugh 
Gough was sent with a powerful army of 14,000 men to 
enforce obedience to the views of the governor-general. In 
a battle of unusual severity at Maharajpore he gave the 
Mahrattas a decisive defeat. Another victory, gained on 
the very same day by general Grey at Punniar, over 
another division of their army, compelled them to entire 
submission, and for a time there was peace throughout our 
Indian territories. 

It was not of long duration. In the Lahore territory, 
since better known to us by the name of the Punjab, or 
the country between the five rivers,—the Indus, the Jehlum, 
the Chenab, the Eavee, and the Gharra,—the death of 
Eunjeet Singh had given rise to civil dissensions. His son, 
Shere Singh, whom we had recognized as his successor, had 
been assassinated; and, at last, a boy, named Dhuleep 




LXXI1.] VICTORIA. 823 

Singh, had become the maharajah; while the vizier was 
another boy, named Heera Singh, who was shortly after¬ 
wards put to death by the troops, who, in fact, had engrossed 
all the power in the district. They, as an army is apt to 
be, were eager for war, jealous of our increasing*power, and 
especially of the force which we kept at Ferozepoor. At 
last, in December, 1845, they declared war against us, and 
crossing the river Sutlej, a branch of the Gharra, the most 
eastern of the five rivers, they advanced in hostile array 
towards Ferozepoor. Lord Ellenborough had lately been 
recalled, and the new governor-general was sir Henry 
Hardinge, a soldier of the highest reputation. The com¬ 
mander-in-chief was still sir Hugh Gough, and they both 
speedily advanced to the threatened frontier with a powerful 
army. 

The whole force of the Sikhs outnumbered them by nearly 
one-half; but in the numbers concerned in the subsequent en¬ 
gagements there was no great disparity. Our men undervalued 
the Sikhs as troops, thinking them inferior to the Aftgbans; 
but it was soon found that they were equal to any native 
soldiers who had ever opposed us. Battle followed on battle 
with almost unexampled rapidity. It was only on the 11th of 
December that the Sutlej was crossed. The 18th saw a 
fierce combat at Moodkee, in which the Sikhs were re¬ 
pulsed with the loss of some guns ; and, three days after¬ 
wards, both armies having been augmented by considerable 
reinforcements, met again on the field of Feerozshuhur. 
So equally balanced was the fortune of the first day that 
some of our officers counselled a retreat; but the battle 
was renewed on the morrow; and, at last, after a stubborn 
conflict, the Sikh generals, who were commonly suspected 
of treachery, fled from the field, and their army, deprived 
of its commanders, was forced to retreat, with the loss of 
half its artillery. Our loss also had been prodigious; and 
Hardinge thought it necessary to send for fresh reinforce¬ 
ments before venturing on offensive operations. The Sikhs 
were ready before he was; and by the middle of January, 
1846, they again advanced, and threatened Loodiana, which 
sir Harry Smith succeeded in relieving, though not without 
a severe action, in which it was again believed that the 
Sikh general did not wish his troops to be too victorious, 
lest they should become ungovernable. A few days later, 
on the 28th of January, a terrible conflict took place at 


A.b. 

1844 — 
1848 . 









824 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

a.d. Aliwal, when the Sikhs were driven hack across the Sutlej, 
184G— an( j on the 10th of February the final battle of the campaign 
1849 ‘ was fought at Sobraon. Once more the Sikh leaders wished 
to be defeated; hut their troops fought as usual with the 
most heroic resolution; nor did they yield the victory till 
they had inflicted on their conquerors a loss of more than 
2000 men. But they now found the impossibility of con¬ 
tinuing the war, and peace was made, by the terms of which 
the Punjab was divided between two sovereigns, a con¬ 
siderable district being assigned to Gholab Singh, while 
we occupied the dominions of Dhuleep Singh till he arrived 
at the age of manhood, and maintained a force in the pro¬ 
vince, sufficient, it was expected, to enforce the re-establish¬ 
ment of order, and the obedience of the still discontented 
native army. 

It was not, however, easy at once to restore tranquillity 
among so fickle and restless a people. The governor of 
Mooltan, an important fortress and district in the south of 
the province, had long been anxious to convert his vice¬ 
royalty into a kingdom, and at last, in the spring of 1848, 
broke out into open revolt, murdering two British officers, 
who were at Mooltan, in the discharge of their duty. Had 
it not been for the firmness and skill of Herbert Edwardes, 
who, though only a lieutenant, displayed all the qualities 
of an experienced commander, this unexpected outbreak 
might have led to serious consequences; but he collected a 
small force, and beat Moolraj, the rebel chief, in a pitched 
battle at Kinevree, on the 18th of June. 

At the beginning of 1849 Mooltan was taken by general 
"Whisk, and Moolraj was compelled to surrender. But 
the length of time which Mooltan resisted encouraged the 
other Sikh princes to hope that they might be able to take 
advantage of the occupation thus afforded to our Indian 
government, to get rid of our force, which still occupied a 
portion of their country, and to relieve themselves from 
the annual tribute, which by the recent treaty they were 
bound to pay; and again they raised the standard of revolt. 
The soldier, sir H. Hardinge, had been replaced by lord 
Halhousie, a civilian; but war was not encountered with 
less vigour than before. In November, 1848, sir Hugh 
Gough, who had now been ennobled by the title of lord 
Gough, crossed the Sutlej, hoping to crush the insurrection 
in the bud, and, after a fierce skirmish at Bamnuggur, on 


VICTORIA. 


825 


LXXII.] 

the 13th of January, 1819, came in front of the whole force a.d. 
of the enemy at Chillianwallah. A most fearful conflict 
took place, in which our loss was tremendous; and a native 
enemy could for the first time boast that he had met the 
British in a pitched battle without discomfiture. Their 
triumph, however, was not of long duration. Before the 
end of the next month, though their army had been strongly 
reinforced in the mean time, lord Gough again attacked 
them at Goojerat, and gained a complete victory. The 
Sikhs were reduced to submission on our terms, and by a 
formal decree the governor-general secured future peace 
by annexing all their territory to the dominions of the 
company. 

During these eventful years circumstances arose also in 
the countries beyond India, which increased our power and 
reputation in those distant regions. The Chinese, at 
the beginning of 1839, in consequence of disputes about 
the trade in opium, seized on a vast amount of property 
belonging to the merchants, and threw the merchants 
themselves, and captain Elliott, the superintendent of our 
affairs at Canton, into prison. A naval and military force 
was at once sent from Calcutta to chastise these insults. 

The fleet blockaded Canton; and the soldiers, under sir 
Hugh Gough, landed on the continent, and defeated the 
Chinese armies, stormed their strongest forts, aud seized 
on the islands of Chusan and Hong Kong; but the occupa¬ 
tion of them was not at first very advantageous to us, since 
the unhealthiness of the air brought on a terrible mortality 
among our troops. As the Chinese still held out, Gough, 
who was now joined by sir Henry Pottinger, and by admiral 
sir W. Parker, proceeded northwards to Amoy, and stormed 
that important place in spite of the great and unexpected 
strength of its fortifications. In all these operations our 
loss was most trivial. The Chinese, though not timid, had 
no skill in fighting; so that when we took Chinhoe, they 
lost 2000. men, while our loss was only nineteen killed and 
wounded. At last, when they found us preparing to 
attack Nankin, the ancient capital of their empire, they 
submitted; and in August, 1812, a treaty of peace was 
signed, by which they agreed to pay a sum exceeding 
4,000,000/., to cede to us the island of Hong Kong, and 
to open their principal harbours to our merchants, with 
full security for their future commercial operations; and 





826 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. though they have not always observed these stipulations 

lt!42. w ith good faith, nor abstained at all times from acts of 
injustice and violence towards our countrymen, still the 
mercantile advantages which we thus obtained have proved 
of great value, and it added considerably to our reputation 
among the Eastern nations, that we had so easily reduced 
to such complete submission the most arrogant barbarians 
in the world. 

The advantages which were opened to us about the same 
time in the great and important island of Borneo are 
invested with a more romantic interest, owing their origin 
to the enterprise, genius, and enlightened humanity of one 
noble-minded individual. In the year 1838 Mr. Brooke, 
now known as sir James Brooke, having received for his 
great deeds the riband of the Bath, which has never been 
more honourably earned, having in the course of his travels 
visited the island of Borneo, and found a great portion of 
the inhabitants of that and the neighbouring islands wholly 
abandoned to a life of piracy, slave-trading, and murder, 
conceived the idea of devoting himself to the civilization of 
those savage tribes. With this generous and holy view, at 
the beginning of 1839, he took up his residence at Sarawak, 
on the western coast of the island, where his fearless frank¬ 
ness, joined to a singular degree of tact and judgment, soon 
procured him such an ascendancy over the sultan, that he 
made over to him the entire sovereignty of the district of 
Sarawak, which he had long been unable to keep in order, 
with the title of rajah. Being thus invested with positive 
authority, Brooke proceeded vigorously in his work of 
reform, in which he was efficiently assisted by captain 
Keppel, and one or two other commanders of British ships 
stationed in those waters. He fought one or two severe 
actions with large flotillas of pirates, and inflicted a terrible 
but necessary punishment on the hordes which had long 
been the terror of the Eastern sea. He himself was severely 
wounded ; but personal danger and suffering neither daunted 
his resolution nor abated his energy ; and when order was in 
some degree established he began to apply himself to the 
arts of peace with admirable judgment, abstaining from 
doing too much, or from encumbering an infant commerce 
with complicated regulations, feeling, to use his own words, 
that “when the British flag was once hoisted, trade and 
prosperity would follow in its footsteps.” All classes, from 



LX XIII. J VICTORIA. 827 

the bishop of Calcutta to the master of the smallest vessel 
which visited those regions, soon perceived the blessings 
which were being diffused by his healthy influence over that 
portion of the globe. The British merchants thankfully 
acknowledged the benefit of the extensive field of commerce 
which he had opened to their enterprise. The government 
set the seal of their approbation on his efforts by investing 
him with the office of governor of Labuan, a small island to 
the north of Sarawak, and of British commissioner to the 
native states of Borneo ; and, in 1848, after a short visit 
to England, he returned to his new home with increased 
powers, to prosecute his career of useful beneficence, 
deservedly proud of having won the esteem and admiration 
of his countrymen as well as of the barbarians whom he 
governed, and of the enemies whom he curbed, not so much 
by his wisdom and courage, great as they have been, as by 
the still rarer and more truly glorious qualities of dis¬ 
interested integrity, justice, and humanity. 


CHAPTER LXXIII. 

VICTORIA (CONTINUED). 

’While these events were taking place abroad, at home we 
were enjoying steadily increasing prosperity. At the begin¬ 
ning of 1840 the queen married her first cousin, prince 
Albert of Saxe-Grotha, and the union has proved eminently 
happy, and beneficial to the nation from the examp]e of 
every domestic virtue afforded to their people by the royal 
. pair. The general prosperity was further advanced by the 
financial measures of sir Robert Peel, who, in 1841, again 
became prime minister, and who availed himself of his 
return to power to remodel the whole commercial system of 
the country in a manner that did the highest credit to his 
abilities as a financier. He administered the affairs of the 
country with great success for some years, during which, by 
a happy mixture of firmness and moderation, he terminated 
a dispute with the United States about the boundary 
between the possessions of the two nations, which at one 
time threatened to involve them in war, till, in the year 
1846, his cabinet was broken up in consequence of a change 
of policy to which he had felt himself driven in the previous 
autumn. 


A.D. 

1842— 
1845. 








828 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. The question of the propriety of maintaining a tax on 
1845 importation of corn had of late years been agitated with 

great earnestness by both parties, and he himself, in the 
revision of our taxation to which I have alluded above, had 
materially modified the duty to which it was liable, though 
still preserving the principle of the sliding scale, which has 
been mentioned in the account of the last years of the reign 
of George III. The Whigs generally maintained that the 
steadiness of price desired to be attained w T ould be better 
secured by a fixed duty, and for some time the dispute 
between the two parties was limited to the question which 
principle of taxation was preferable. But within the last 
few years a new theory had been broached by an association 
called the Anti-Corn-law League, established at Manchester, 
that any tax at all upon the necessary food of the people 
was indefensible, and arguments in its support were urged 
in the house of commons with great vehemence by a nume¬ 
rous party, headed by two large manufacturers, Mr. Cobden 
and Mr. Bright. Peel had constantly upheld the other side 
of the question, arguing that the tax only gave the agricul¬ 
turists a protection to which they were fairly entitled, in 
consequence of the especial burdens to which land was 
subject in these kingdoms, and he was supported by a great 
majority in both houses of parliament, who were commonly 
distinguished by the name of Protectionists with reference 
to their opinions on this subject. Por several successive 
sessions the matter was debated with great zeal; but the 
advocates of the repeal of the corn-laws had not made any 
great progress, when, in the autumn of 1845, the question 
suddenly assumed a new aspect in consequence of the 
blight which almost destroyed the potato both in England 
and Ireland, while at the same time the wheat crop was 
unusually deficient. Under these circumstances Peel con¬ 
sidered it impossible to maintain a tax upon corn during 
the ensuing winter, and at the same time he thought it 
would be so difficult to recur to it after having once abro¬ 
gated it that he preferred repealing the corn-laws to sus¬ 
pending them. His proposal was very unwillingly received 
by his colleagues, though at last they all consented to adopt 
his views, with the exception of lord Stanley, the secretary 
of state for the colonies, who resigned his office, in which he 
was succeeded by Mr. Gladstone; and, at the beginning of 
the next year 7 Peel brought into the house of commons a 




LXX1II.] VICTORIA. 829 

bill for the entire repeal of all duty on the importation of 
corn beyond the sum of one shilling, the collection of which 
would enable the government to ascertain the quantity im¬ 
ported. His proposal was resisted with great determination 
by the Protectionists, and his own conduct in bringing it 
forward, atter having pledged himself so long and so strongly 
to the opposite view, was assailed with the fiercest invective. 
However, a majority felt the impossibility of maintaining 
the corn-laws now that they were abandoned by him who 
had long been looked upon as their ablest champion, and 
their repeal was carried. But, though he was thus far suc¬ 
cessful, the measure led to the overthrow of the government. 
The Protectionists, w r ho had previously formed the bulk of 
his supporters, leagued w r ith the Whigs to get rid of a 
minister by whom they considered that they and the cause 
dearest to their hearts had been betrayed ; and in July the 
combined parties defeated him in the house of commons, and 
a Whig ministry, under lord JohnKussell, succeeded to power. 

No change of cabinets, however, had much effect in allay¬ 
ing the spirit of discontent that still troubled Ireland. 
Severe laws of coercion were passed to no purpose, and 
enactments, conceived in a milder spirit, were more ineffec¬ 
tual still, while the great mass of the priesthood co-operated 
with O’Connell in his lucrative trade of agitation; for, 
though the exaction of the Catholic rent, as it had been 
called, had been terminated by the grant of Homan Catholic 
emancipation, he had still every year levied on his country¬ 
men a great sum, of which he had the entire disposal, in 
which extortion he was aided by the priests, who employed 
all the power wdiich their form of religion gives them over 
their parishioners to compel even the poorest of the pea¬ 
santry to contribute. In May, 1847, he died, and, though 
none of his followers had the ability requisite to fill his place, 
a gentleman of ancient family and excellent private cha¬ 
racter, Mr. Smith O’Brien, the member for Limerick, aspired 
to be his successor. His want of discretion, which at once 
precipitated his followers into open rebellion, and his want 
of any kind of ability, which rendered that rebellion ridi¬ 
culous, has perhaps contributed as much as any other cause 
to the comparative tranquillity which of late years has 
reigned in that island. 

The year 1847 was one of most grievous distress in 
Ireland: the almost entire loss of the potato, and the 


A.D. 

1846 — 

1847- 




830 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. scantiness of other crops had produced a famine; though 

1848. the British parliament voted enormous sums to supply the 
Irish with food, numbers died of actual starvation, while 
want and hardship implanted disease scarcely less fatal in 
many of the survivors. In spite of the lavish liberality 
with which the wealth of England was poured forth to alle¬ 
viate these miseries, O’Brien and some editors of news¬ 
papers persuaded a large mass of the people that the true 
remedy for them was to be found in a separation from 
England, and in July he prepared to compel this separation 
by force of arms, collected 2000 or 3000 men, armed in dif¬ 
ferent degrees of completeness, and summoned the police in 
different towns which he passed through to surrender their 
arms and join him. They were steady in their loyalty, and 
for some time O’Brien forbore to use violence ; but at last 
he ordered his men to fire upon one house in which a body 
of forty or fifty police were awaiting reinforcements. The 
police returned the fire; one or two of the insurgents were 
killed, the rest fled, and O’Brien among the first. He was 
soon taken, tried, and convicted of high treason; but the 
affair had been so contemptible that the government could 
afford to be merciful, and were contented with inflicting on 
him the punishment of transportation, which was remitted 
in 1856, when the restoration of peace was celebrated by a 
general amnesty to all political offenders. 

An attempt to excite disturbance in England had been 
equally abortive. A new French revolution had taken place 
in February, which had ended in the expulsion of Louis 
Philippe and the establishment of a republic ; and this event 
had greatly encouraged the Chartists, who announced their 
intention to assemble on Kennington Common, and from 
thence to proceed in a body to the houses of parliament, on 
the 10th of April, to present a petition which they asserted 
to have received 5,000,000 signatures. It was evident that 
the threatened assembly might lead to very dangerous con¬ 
sequences. The government behaved with great resolution, 
issuing a proclamation prohibiting it as illegal, and swear¬ 
ing in a great number of special constables, among whom 
was prince Louis Napoleon, at that time a fugitive in Eng¬ 
land, and now, by the almost unanimous suffrage of his 
countrymen, emperor of the French; while the duke of 
Wellington, who still held the post of commander-in-chief, 
brought several regiments to London, and, though he for- 




LXXIII.] VICTORIA. 831 

bore to provoke an attack by a display of bis force, posted 
it in different parts of the metropolis, so judiciously as to 
secure the instant suppression of any violence that might 
be attempted. None, however, was attempted: the mob 
that assembled at Kennington was far smaller than had 
been expected ; its leaders were daunted by the steadiness 
of the police. After a few noisy speeches the assembly 
dispersed quietly, and the whole affair served only to dis¬ 
play the strength of the government, and the real source of 
that strength, the loyal attachment to its ancient institu¬ 
tions cherished by every class of the people. 

The organization of the military on this occasion was the 
last service rendered by the veteran duke to the country 
which he had so long served. In 1850 his friend, sir Robert 
Peel, died by a fall from his horse, leaving behind him the 
reputation, if not of a firm, bold, far-sighted, and consistent 
statesman, at least that of an honest, disinterested minister, 
whose object in all his actions was the good of his country, 
and who, by his disregard of all opposition, and even of bitter 
personal hostility and obloquy, in the pursuit of that object, 
carried many measures of great benefit, the success of which 
could perhaps have been secured by no inferior influence. And 
in September, 1852, the duke himself died, almost suddenly; 
awakening (though at his age such an event could not have 
been expected to be long delayed) such an universal regret 
as was the best testimony to the great and rare assemblage 
of virtues which adorned his character. 

On his military exploits it is superfluous to dwell. Sur¬ 
rounded by difficulties greater than ever had embarrassed 
Marlborough, his fearless spirit of enterprise enabled him to 
perform exploits exceeding in importance, as well as in 
number, the achievements of that great commander, while 
his unvarying prudence preserved him from the disasters 
that more than once threatened with total ruin the brilliant 
genius of the great Frederic. The general with whom he 
may perhaps most naturally be compared is his own great 
antagonist, Napoleon; and even from that comparison he 
need not shrink. Brilliant as w r ere some of the blows which 
the French emperor dealt with such electric violence on his 
foes, yet none of his victories were more complete than 
those of Salamanca and Vittoria; consummate as was the 
mastery over every branch of the military science which he 
exhibited in so many of his campaigns, from the time 


A.D. 

1848— 

1850. 






832 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 


a.d. which first displayed his genius to the Austrians in Italy to 
1852. that when it almost baffled the overpowering hosts which 
pressed him on all sides in the plains of Champagne: 
yet we may fairly doubt whether the skill then put forth 
surpassed or even equalled that which planned for the 
British troops the retreat behind the lines of Torres Vedras, 
and which drove the French, in spite of their superiority in 
numbers, step by step, from the coast of the Atlantic to the 
walls of Toulouse; while it may certainly be urged that the 
bravest and most skilful of the generals who succumbed to 
Napoleon were far inferior to the long list of French mar¬ 
shals, who, victorious over all other enemies, successively 
met with unvarying defeat when confronted by the genius 
of Wellington, at once audacious and cautious, rapid and 
deliberate; to which Napoleon himself, in his only conflict 
with it, proved equally inferior. 

As a statesman, the foresight with which he predicted the 
course of events in Spain, and the causes which led to his 
final triumph, was scarcely less admirable than the military 
genius by which he ensured the fulfilment of his predictions, 
while, as a minister at home, he displayed on all occasions 
the most consummate administrative ability; and if, greatly 
influenced no doubt by the effects of the revolutionary spirit 
which he had witnessed in Spain and France, he was too apt 
to confound reform with revolution, and to oppose measures 
which have since been found beneficial, yet, even by the 
confession of his opponents, no one ever conducted a parlia¬ 
mentary opposition with such candour and fairness; no one 
ever so cordially put forth his utmost exertions to secure 
for the measures which he had opposed, when they were 
once carried, the success which till that moment he had 
refused to anticipate for them. 

The cause of this conduct is to be found in that principle 
which at all times actuated him, and which is more really 
entitled to our admiration than even his vast military and 
political ability; his unswerving, disinterested sense of 
duty: no personal considerations of his own power, in¬ 
fluence, or popularity, or even of his own character for fore¬ 
sight and consistency, were ever weighed by him for a 
single moment against what he believed to be the true 
interest of the country. And his country, knowing that his 
sole object was at all times to serve her, has repaid his 
devotion to her interests with a reverence for his virtues 


VICTORIA. 


833 


LXXIII.] 

and an attachment to his memory, which may prove the best 
incentive to future generations, bv imitating his virtues, to 
seek to rival his glory. 

Too soon was a field opened to his admirers, on which to 
show how far they had profited by his military lessons. 
After one or two changes in the cabinet, a coalition ministry 
had been formed under lord Aberdeen, who was looked 
upon as the chief of what was now called Peel’s party, with 
several leading Whigs, lord Granville, lord Palmerston, and 
lord Johu Russell, in important offices. In Prance the 
republic had been terminated by the erection of an empire, 
with prince Louis Napoleon at its head ; and the emperor of 
Russia, thinking from the various changes that neither 
Prance nor England were in a very settled state, and espe¬ 
cially that they were very little likely to combine in any 
system of joint operations, considered it a favourable time for 
prosecuting the views which he had long cherished against 
the independence of Turkey. He sounded sir George 
Seymour, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, with respect to 
the views of his government as to the dismemberment of the 
Turkish empire; comparing it to a sick man, whose inherit¬ 
ance must shortly be divided among his nearest friends. 
The British ministry did not consider Turkey in such a pre¬ 
carious state, and at all events was not inclined to give such 
a proof of its regard for its old ally, as to begin to plunder 
her before she was dead. But Nicholas was determined not 
to lose the opportunity which he fancied so favourable; and 
having picked a quarrel with the Porte on the refusal of some 
of his demands respecting the Greek Church in the Holy 
Land, and the adherents of that Church residing in the 
Turkish dominions, he poured a body of troops into the 
provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia while his fleet issued 
from Sebastopol, a fortress of amazing strength at the 
southern point of the Crimea, and wholly destroyed the 
Turkish fleet, which was lying at Sinope, on the opposite 
coast of the Black Sea, with circumstances of the most 
excessive and needless cruelty. 

These events made a great impression on the governments 
of Western Europe; and a conference between the ministers 
of England, France. Austria, and Prussia was held at Vienna 
in July; who, however, found their efforts to terminate the 
dispute by peaceful means ineffectual. Turkey claimed the 
assistance of England, to which she was entitled by treaty; 

3 H 


A.D. 

1852— 

1854. 






A.D. 

1853- 
1855. 


834 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [CH. 

France cordially agreed with the British cabinet in its view 
of what was due, not only to the interests of Europe, but to 
justice. A combined British and French fleet was at once 
sent to the Dardanelles ; and as the negotiations, which were 
continued during the winter, led to no satisfactory result, 
in March, 1854, the two nations declared war against 
Russia. A powerful British fleet w T as sent to the Baltic, 
under sir C. Napier, and a numerous army, both British and 
French, was conveyed to the Black Sea, and by the begin¬ 
ning of May was encamped at Yarna. 

Napier’s fleet, though of great service in paralyzing the 
Russian trade, and in detaining on the shores of the Baltic 
a large force which would otherwise have beeu employed 
against our army in the south, was unable to perform any 
brilliant actions, from the circumstance of the Russians 
keeping close in their harbours, which they knew to be 
almost inaccessible, from the shoals with which they were 
surrounded. He did indeed destroy the strong fortress of 
Bomarsund on the Aland Islands; but a careful reeonnois- 
sance of Cronstadt showed him that that, the principal 
stronghold of the enemy in the Baltic, was unassailable with 
the slightest prospect of success, and neither he nor his 
successor, admiral Dundas, were able to effect any thing in 
appearance worthy of the gallant armaments entrusted to 
their command. In the Black Sea, admiral sir Edmund 
Lyons was more successful; for though his bombardment of 
Sebastopol produced no great effect, and though he was 
unable to force an entrance into the harbour, which the 
Russians had effectually blocked up by sinking the whole 
of their fleet across its mouth, an expedition which he 
detached into the sea of Azof took Kerch, and all the towns 
on the south-western coast, and by the vast quantities of 
magazines of every kind which it destroyed, contributed very 
much to the ultimate defeat of the enemy before Sebastopol 
itself. But, as the most important and most interesting 
operations were those of the army, we shall confine ourselves 
to a brief narrative of the campaign in the Crimea, with the 
name of which the whole war is identified in the minds of all 
who recollect the agonizing anxiety with which for eighteen 
long months they looked for news from that previously 
little-known country. 

Yarna proved a most unhealthy quarter for our army; 
and towards the end of the summer, it was determined to 





LXXTII.] VICTORIA. 835 

transfer both English and Erench troops to the Crimea, the 
southern promontory of which was occupied by the city of 
Sebastopol, ou the fortifications of which all the resources of 
military science had been exhausted iu the most lavish 
manner; and which was held by a large garrison under the 
command of prince Glortschakoff, than whom there was no 
officer in the Russian service more deservedly trusted by his 
imperial master. The commander of the English force, of 
about 25,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, was lord Raglan, 
who, as lord Fitzroy Somerset, had been one of Wellington’s 
aides-de-camp on the glorious field of Waterloo. The 
Erench army, of nearly the same number, was under the 
orders of marshal St. Arnaud, who had already won high 
distinction in the wars of Algeria. On the 14th of Sep¬ 
tember, the two armies landed in the Crimea, at a place 
called Old Fort, about twenty miles to the north of Sebas¬ 
topol ; and as soon as the stores were disembarked and the 
men had rested, they began their march towards that city. 
Neither army, however, was in good health; the French 
marshal was so ill that, after a few days, he was forced to 
resign his command, and he died before he could reach 
Constantinople; and among our own troops, cholera and 
dysentery were far from being eradicated, and carried off 
many men, even before the battle of the Alma. 

It was soon known that the allies would not be allowed 
to place themselves in front of Sebastopol without opposi¬ 
tion, and after marching one day, on the morning of the 
20th of September they found the whole Russian army, 
of about 60,000 men, drawn up on the southern side of 
the small river Alma, in a position so strong, that prince 
Menschikoff, its general, wrote to his imperial master that 
he could detain the invaders three weeks in front of it. 
The Russian line of battle occupied the summit of a gentle 
slope, at the foot of which was the Alma, a narrow, but 
in some places deep stream, with steep banks. The left of 
their position, which was opposite to the French, was pro¬ 
tected by such rugged and precipitous heights, that they 
conceived it needless to fortify it with artillery; but the 
open plain, across which our men were to advance, was 
commanded by formidable batteries erected on every avail¬ 
able spot. Neither precipices nor batteries, however, could 
arrest the progress of the allied armies, neither of which 
had ever met an equal except the other. The French, with 

3 h 2 


A.D. 

1854 




836 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.d. their wonted gallantry, climbed the heights in their front, 

1854. dragged up some of their heavy guns, and, in spite of the 
stubborn resistance of the Russians, who were every where 
superior in numbers to their assailants, completely turned 
their left; while the British soldiers forded the Alma, and 
advanced up the open slope in the face of a most tremendous 
fire, never wavering till they took the batteries which were 
pouring in upon them, forcing the enemy back step by step 
from each successive position, till at the end of three 
hours they were completely driven from the field, with the 
loss of some of their guns, and prince Menschikoff’s carriage 
and despatches. 

The victorious armies at once advanced, though there was 
already such a deficiency in the necessary supplies, that 
our own troops, both men and officers, were for several 
days unable to obtain the smallest quantity of meat, and 
the horses were without forage, and even without water; 
hut these difficulties were disregarded, and by a skilfully 
planned march the army passed round Sebastopol, and 
established itself at Balaklava, on the southern side of the 
city, where there was a small harbour, which would enable 
the soldiers at all times to receive supplies from the fleets, 
which, after transporting them from Yarna, accompanied 
their march, and greatly assisted them in many of their 
subsequent operations. At the end of three weeks, which 
were occupied in completing our trenches, and erecting 
batteries, the bombardment of the town commenced. The 
fleets stood in and engaged the forts at the mouth of the 
main harbour; and from that day forth for eleven long 
months did the assailants exhaust every possible form of 
attack, and the defenders display the most untiring in¬ 
genuity and the most heroic courage in baffling and in 
withstanding the fearful means of destruction employed 
against them. Besides the numerous garrison within the 
walls, a powerful army of 30,000 men, .under general 
Liprandi, was in the neighbourhood, which, on the 25th of 
October, eight days after the commencement of the bom¬ 
bardment, made a formidable attack on our position at 
Balaklava; but, though in consequence of an unfortunate 
mistake on the part of its commanders, our light cavalry 
brigade was almost cut to pieces, they gained no other 
advantage. A second attack the next day met with even 
worse fortune, being repulsed with very heavy loss, and 




LXXIII.J VICTORIA. 837 

the enemy postponed any further offensive operations till 
some large reinforcements should arrive, which were known 
to be on their way. On the 4th of November they arrived; 
and the very next day the whole army, now numbering 
00,000 men, advanced to fight the bloody* battle, which from 
a small ruin overlooking the field has received the name of 
Inkermann. 

Menschikoff had not yet learnt, even from the day of 
the Alma, the folly of premature boasting. On the eve 
of the coming battle he wrote to the emperor to announce 
that in a few days the invaders of his dominions would have 
perished by the sword, or have been driven into the sea, 
and to request him to send his sons to Sebastopol “to 
receive untouched the priceless treasure which his master 
had committed to his keeping.” It was against the British 
flank that his attack was directed. Soon after midnight 
the tolling of church-bells, and the sounds of chanting and 
psalmody were heard in Sebastopol, and after a solemn 
religious service, the troops advanced against the heights 
on which our camp stood. It was a dark, misty morning, 
and, owing to the want of caution of the officer in command 
of our pickets, the first intimation 4hat our men received 
of the approach of the enemy was derived from a heavy 
volley poured into the ranks, which, for the most part, were 
still buried in sleep; but no troops recover from a surprise 
so readily as the British. The weight of the attack fell on 
our second division, under the command of general Penne- 
father, and on the guards, led by the duke of Cambridge. 
The Trench general, Canrobert, who had succeeded Arnaud 
in the command, sent a division to their assistance ; and 
this small portion of the two armies, scarcely amounting 
to 14,000 men, resisted upwards of four times their 
number for eight hours, and at last drove them headlong 
from the field, with a loss in killed and wounded exceeding 
the number of the whole allied force by which they had 
been encountered. 

Our loss also had been severe. More than a fourth part 
of the force engaged had been killed or wounded; but still 
they had fallen, covered with glorious wounds, by the manner 
of their deaths affording the best consolation to their sor¬ 
rowing kinsmen. But want and disease are foes more ter¬ 
rible than sword and bullet; to endure such hardships 
with patience and fortitude is a harder task than to face 


A.D. 

1854. 


838 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


[CH. 

a.b. the excitement of a battle ; and our gallant soldiers were 

1854 . now eX p 0sec l to them in a more painful degree than any 
British army on record. No grudging spirit had been 
shown at home ; not only was every thing that could be 
required cheerfully voted by the parliament, but private 
subscriptions, amounting to above a million and a half of 
money, were raised in order to provide pensions for the 
wounded, and for the relations of the slaiu, and to furnish 
additional comforts to the living. But, unfortunately, the 
long period of peace which the country had enjoyed had 
greatly disorganized all our military departments, and there 
was a want of foresight at first, and of arrangement after¬ 
wards, attributable perhaps rather to circumstances than to 
individuals, but which was bitterly felt by the soldiers from 
the first day that they landed in the Crimea. Unavoidable 
misfortunes augmented their distress. At first, though the 
. rigours of the Crimean winter were well known, no steps 
had been taken to provide the men with sufficient shelter 
or with warm clothing; and when those necessaries were 
sent out, the greater part of them were lost in a storm, in 
which the vessel which conveyed them was wrecked. The 
food, too, was for a long time bad in quality and deficient 
in quantity; and even when the requisite supplies were in 
the harbour of Balaklava, the roads were so bad and the 
means of transit so scanty, though the camp was only 
seven miles off, that they were almost as much out of the 
reach of the troops as if they had been in England. Want 
of food, want of clothing, and want of shelter produced 
their usual sad results; every form of disease, ague, fever, 
dysentery, and cholera, fell with giant strength upon our 
men, thinning their ranks with a havoc far exceeding the 
ravages of war; the hospitals were full, and the sick, for 
whom room could not be found in them, were more numerous 
than those who were admitted. The medical staff too was 
very deficient in number, and many died for want of the 
necessary attention. 

Erom these scenes of mismanagement and misery one 
person, though such a motive was far from her thoughts, 
contrived to reap a glory undying as mortal fame can be, 
and pure as that of the saints in heaven. A young lady, 
Miss Elorence Nightingale, of a high degree of personal 
attraction and accomplishments, of good birth, and of good 
fortune, hearing of the distress of our gallant soldiers, and 



VICTORIA. 


839 


LXXIII.] 

especially of the want of nurses in the hospitals, and having a.d. 
already taken a humane interest in the details of such esta- 1854_ 
blishments, and acquired an acquaintance with the system loJO * 
pursued in them, both in England and on the Continent, 
made the government an offer to go to the seat of war 
herself with a body of nurses, and there to devote herself to 
the care of the sick and wounded. Her proposal was 
thankfully accepted. Above thirty more ladies, attracted 
by her example, offered her their assistance. With a staff 
of nurses, hired by the government to aid them, they sailed 
without delay, and in the beginning of the winter landed at 
Scutari, where the hospitals of the army were established. 

Eor twelve long months did these admirable women, 
accustomed to every luxury at home, submit to the most 
painful drudgery, and expose themselves to scenes more 
trying to the nerves and courage than the severest toil, to 
the most loathsome smells, to the most agonizing sights, for 
the sake of helping those, who in the cause of their country 
had become disabled from helping themselves. How, walk¬ 
ing like ministering angels amid that scene of anguish 
and woe, they tended the wounded, spoke words of holy 
comfort to the dying, cheered the convalescent, devoting 
even the time set apart for their own rest and relaxation to 
reading the sufferers’ letters received from their homes, or 
writing for them to their friends, is told by the grateful 
tongues of thousands of soldiers, but can never be adequately 
described by the most eloquent historian. 

Meanwhile, the tale of the sufferings of the army caused 
the greatest discontent and indignation at home, which was 
especially directed towards the ministry, who proved to be 
divided among themselves. After some bitter discussions 
had taken place in parliament, lord Aberdeen resigned, and 
as lord Derby, to whom the queen offered the government, 
doubted his ability to form a cabinet as strong as the emer¬ 
gency required, the task, with the general approbation of 
the country, was entrusted to lord Palmerston, who, at the 
beginning of 1855, became prime minister; lord Panmure 
being the secretary at war, and lord Clarendon having the 
seals of the foreign department. 

All the spring and summer the siege of Sebastopol was 
maintained with vigour. In June lord Raglan died of 
cholera, sincerely regretted by both armies, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by general Simpson; while, in the Erench army, 




840 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A.D. 

1855— 

185G. 


general Canrobert resigned bis command, and was succeeded 
by general Pelissier. To historians of the campaign it 
belongs to relate the details of the different operations by 
which the siege w r as conducted to its ultimate success, the 
assaults of the Eedan, the capture of the Mamelon, and to 
do justice to the steady resolution and gallant sallies of the 
[Russians. In August they once more ventured on a pitched 
battle, attacking the position held by the French, and by the 
Sardinians, of whom a small but gallant body, under general 
de la Marmora, had lately joined the allies. But they were 
defeated with heavy loss, and made no further attempt to 
avert the fate of the beleaguered city. At last, on the 8th 
of September, the final assault took place; the English 
attacked the Eedan, and effected an entry into that formida¬ 
ble outwork, though they were unable to retain their posi¬ 
tion ; but the French, at the same time, made themselves 
masters of another redoubt, called the Malakhoff; and in the 
night the Eussians evacuated the whole side of the citv to 
the north of the harbour, of which we at once took 
possession. 

In effect the war was over with the fall of Sebastopol. 
No other operation of any importance was undertaken 
during the autumn, except a successful expedition made by 
the fleet against Kinburn, at the mouth of the Dnieper; and, 
in the spring, the long negotiations which took place at 
Paris were terminated by the signing of a treaty of peace, in 
which Eussia receded from all her demands on Turkey which 
had led to the war, consented to the permanent dismantling 
of the fortifications of Sebastopol, and to a condition pro¬ 
hibiting any future maintenance of a fleet of war in the 
Black Sea, renounced her claims on the principalities of 
Moldavia and Wallachia, and agreed to the establishment 
of a new frontier for her province of Bessarabia, ceding a 
small portion of her previous territory in that quarter .to 
Moldavia, so that, for the first time since the reign of Peter 
the Great, a war waged by Eussia terminated in the diminu¬ 
tion instead of in the augmentation of her dominions. 

This alone would have been a great result; but other cir¬ 
cumstances also characterized this war, which we may rea¬ 
sonably hope will have a durable effect on the future peace of 
the world. Many of the most terrible wars that in former 
times have desolated Europe owed their origin to the enmity, 
the natural enmity, as unthinking people often called it, 





VICTORIA. 


841 


LXXIIT.] 

between France and England: but in this war, for almost a.d. 
the first time, the English and French armies fought as 
allies ; and this new friendship, cemented by their blood, 
may be looked upon as the surest pledge of future tran¬ 
quillity. The two nations are now closely united by 
achievements performed and honours earned in common, by 
reciprocal aid and mutual sympathy in the battle-field; 
pressing onwards side by side, and struggling shoulder to 
shoulder, they have learnt the value of each other’s co-ope¬ 
ration while witnessing, with admiration unalloyed by 
jealousy, the admirable qualities which distinguished each. 

No nation but the one has ever been able to contend with 
the other; and, as long as they are united, we may safely 
predict that no other nation will be so forgetful of the 
warning afforded by the fate of Russia as to venture to 
encounter their combined hostility; while this consideration 
alone should be sufficient to make the maintenance of an 
alliance, which bears and promises such happy fruits, the 
most sincere and permanent object of the statesmen of both 
countries. 

At no period in our history have greater advances in the 
prosperity and comfort of the people been made than in 
the time which has elapsed since the death of George III. 

The population has nearly doubled. The resources and 
riches of the nation have increased so greatly, that in spite 
of the repeal of taxes to an enormous amount, the revenue 
raised far exceeds the amount levied when George IY. 
came to the throne. At the same time the condition of the 
poorer classes has been greatly improved. Education has 
been extended and encouraged throughout the breadth and 
length of the land; churches in vast numbers have been 
built; while many of the nobles of the land, by the affec¬ 
tionate and judicious interest which they have displayed in 
the social and moral welfare of their poorer neighbours, 
have greatly contributed to fix the national prosperity on 
its surest foundation, the harmonious union and cordial 
mutual good will of all classes of the people. 

The same progressive prosperity pervades our colonial 
dominions. Disturbances did at one time threaten our 
important settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, but they 
were soon terminated ; and in other quarters the increasing 
resources of our distant settlements are not only a jus¬ 
tifiable cause of pride, but an important accession of strength 







842 


HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 


a.d. and wealth to the mother country; while one of them, 
1856 . Australia, has from its gold-mines poured such floods of 
wealth into our lap as have well nigh counterbalanced the 
vast calls which famine, war, and the spread of commercial 
enterprise have made upon the resources of the whole 
kingdom. 

Though we forbear to speak of individuals who, during 
this and the two preceding reigns, have devoted themselves 
to the arts of peace, we still may not close our narrative 
without recording that those arts have never been more 
diligently or more usefully cultivated; and as their most 
remarkable fruits we may especially notice railroads, and 
the electric telegraph, which have so wonderfully facilitated 
communication of every kind, and are gradually bringing 
the most remote countries into easy and daily intercourse 
with each other. 

I have thus endeavoured to give a brief account of the 
course of events through which our nation, from being an 
inconsiderable horde of savages, has arrived at the height 
of wealth, of power, and of glory which we now enjoy. 
Mistress of vast territories in every quarter of the globe, 
England may truly boast that no other people has ever 
ruled such extensive and varied dominions, such numerous 
and willing subjects. No absolute monarchy has ever 
equalled her in the mighty energy which she can con¬ 
centrate on worthy objects, no republic in the completeness 
and perfection of her freedom. If this sketch, brief as it 
is, imperfect, as from its brevity it must inevitably be, 
shall excite mv readers to desire to know more of the 
constitution under which such grand results have been 
achieved; and of the great, and wise, and good men, who 
from time to time have framed and supported that con¬ 
stitution ; have defended, and enlightened, and governed 
that nation; of those noble patriots and heroes, whether 
commanders, or legislators, or statesmen, who are at once 
the glory of the past age, and the example of the future; 
I shall have fully attained the object which I have ventured 
to propose to myself. 


THE END. 


u S 3 


GILBERT AND RTV1NGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN’S SQUARE, LONDON. 
































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